The Quarry
by Scatterheart
Summary: 5 yrs. after Ep. 3, ObiWan Kenobi has settled into exile on Tattooine, spending his days in meditation and keeping distant watch on the young Luke Skywalker. Everything changes when he rescues Stormtrooper A186 from a sandstorm. Obi, OC pairing.
1. The Rescue

THE QUARRY

By: Scatterheart a.k.a. Hallospacegirl

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Summary: Five years after the Clone Wars, Obi-Wan Kenobi has settled into solitary exile on Tattooine, spending his days in meditation and keeping distant watch on the young Luke Skywalker. When he rescues Stormtrooper A-186 from a sandstorm, he suddenly finds himself drawn into an ever growing web of lies and allegiances. SPOILERS FOR REVENGE OF THE SITH.

Categories: Action, adventure, drama, romance. Obi-Wan/Other Character pairing.

Disclaimer: George Lucas owns all, including my soul.

_A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…_

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CHAPTER ONE: THE RESCUE

The thing that Obi-Wan Kenobi remembered most from that hellish duel on Mustafar was the searing pain of lava burning into his right shoulder. All throughout the fight, the molten lake had been spitting out sparks of fire like the surface of a carbonated drink, and he had managed to avoid the larger projectiles while tiny, fiery pinpricks assaulted every inch of his skin. But the flaming glob that he had let tumble onto his shoulder – the action had not been the result of fatigue, nor a slip of concentration, nor a failure to sense its presence in the Force.

It had been deliberate.

He had backpedaled upwards from the floating hovercraft and onto the crumbling, rocky soil, all the while hoarsely screaming at Anakin Skywalker to surrender. He now had the advantage of higher ground; it was useless for Skywalker to continue fighting now. But he had seen the boy coil down like a snake, then spring up at him with lightsaber brandished high, and as Skywalker hung motionless for that split second in the infernal sky, he had already finished calculating his options. He could have hopped three steps back and continued the duel, or he could have leapt forward and effectively offered his head for decapitation, or he could have stayed put in the path of a wayward ball of lava and ended Anakin Skywalker's life.

A single thought had passed through his mind then: _Vader._

Anakin Skywalker? Already dead. Darth Vader.

Darth Vader, not Anakin Skywalker, had been sailing at him from one direction, while the chunk of lava had been hurtling toward him from another.

So he had stayed put. He had swung his lightsaber in an arc of blue, felt it slice almost unresisting through three limbs, as the fireball hissed into his robes and charred into the skin of his right shoulder.

A minute later, as he had stumbled away from the unrecognizable, burning _thing, _writhing and howling upon the blackened soil, he knew that the coin-sized wound he had been nursing with the heel of his left hand would forever remain to remind him of the infinitely greater burns he had inflicted this night.

In fact, Obi-Wan Kenobi mused, he could relive it even now, relive it as vividly as the actual event five years ago. The twinge of old pain at his shoulder. The unbearable swathes of hot wind and the painful pinpricks smattering into his skin. The dull, vacuous feeling of loss that threatened to overstep its Jedi boundaries and grow into something ugly. The smell of singed flesh. The screams. The screams, especially, he could hear, almost as though they were—

Kenobi opened his eyes. He noticed he was half naked, bathed in sweat, and seated crosslegged in a dark, cramped corner of his hovel. This corner he used for meditation, mostly, since it was the furthest removed from any windows, and it spared him from the harsh glare of the Tattooinian suns when he yearned for peace and serenity.

But this time, the coarsely woven curtain that he had hung from the low ceiling had slipped free of one of its hooks, and was fluttering noisily into his bare face and chest, scratching painfully at the scar on his shoulder. He heard the wind howling through the sand dunes in the distance, and heard it whistle fiercely through his window and make a rattling mess of his belongings. Through the rough weave of the curtain, he could see the strings of dried jerky that he had nailed to the kitchen wall flapping and twirling in the reddish-yellow dusk.

_Sandstorm, _Kenobi realized. The memory of Mustafar and Anak – no, Darth Vader – had crept into his meditation because of a sandstorm. He swatted the suffocating curtain aside and jumped to his feet, sand from the two open windows spraying painfully into him. He could usually tell when sandstorms would strike by the heavy, oppressive air that would envelop the atmosphere several days before, but occasionally, nature didn't bother with such a warning. Either that, or he had not lived long enough on this forsaken planet to sense its subtler indications.

He rummaged through the clutter for his tunic and heavy cloak, quickly shrugging them on and tying the cloak tightly around him with a spare length of rope. With one arm shielding his eyes from the windy assault, he struggled over to the nearest window and fumbled for the protective metal sand-shade. When he tried to yank it down, the gears squealed and reverberated in bones of his wrist; sand had jammed into the shade's hinges and left them immobile.

Grimacing, Kenobi gave up his futile manual efforts and reached out with the Force instead. The Jedi Council would have balked at his using the Force for such menial household tasks like removing sand from a shade hinge, and indeed, he recalled the countless times when he had chided Anakin for using the Force to flip the pages of a book, or to impress a group of awestruck younglings. But of course, the Council was now no more, and neither was Anakin, nor the younglings…

The shade fell closed with a satisfying crunch, and Kenobi smiled grimly to himself.

He was almost finished clearing the sand away from the second window when he heard it.

It was that distant sound that had jolted him from his meditation, a prolonged keening that he had initially dismissed as the howl of the wind. But now, through his heightened awareness of the Force, he could clearly feel that it was no mere wind.

Yes, yes, he was almost sure now that it was a – scream. And it was a – he stretched out further – a _human_ scream.

Obi-Wan Kenobi felt himself connect to the Force with an urgency he hadn't needed to use since his flight to Tattooine.

A human scream? Here? Now? He was certain of it. But he had not sensed a human presence near his home during the entire five years of his exile; in fact, he was the only advanced life form that resided in this part of the Jundland Wastes for kilometers around, save for the occasional passing of nomadic Tusken Raiders or Jawas.

He probed more insistently for the source of the scream, at the same time scanning the swirling, sand-filled distance for a visual sign. It came in the form of a small whitish figure that lay upon the sand, barely distinguishable behind the swarming veils of the storm. He gauged the body to be much closer than he had expected, perhaps thirty meters away in the northwest direction. The sandstorm must have greatly muted its presence in the Force.

Pulling his hood tightly about his face, Kenobi grappled for the front door, forced it open, and stumbled out into the storm. He found that he could barely breathe in the full onslaught, much less see. The ground sucked at his feet like quicksand, and the horizontal wind shot sand like millions of blaster shots into his cloak.

Coughing, he closed his stinging eyes and used the Force to guide him through the terrain. The trek out seemed like an eternity, and he fell several times before finally trudging up to the prone white figure. He knelt beside it, holding up a sleeve to shield the both of them as best he could, and ventured to open his eyes.

It was an Imperial Stormtrooper.

If Obi-Wan Kenobi had been any less of a Jedi, he would have reflexively clambered away from the armored soldier as though from a bomb. And perhaps, just to be safe, he would have whipped out the lightsaber at his side and sliced off the helmeted head – it was not the Jedi way, but it would have been the most practical given the circumstances – perhaps he would have clambered back to his hovel, gathered what few essentials he owned, and took off on the next starship that left Mos Eisley.

Instead, Kenobi remained frozen. Qui-Gon Jinn had taught him well. Never act on fear, never act on adrenaline. Only act on the signals flowing through the Force, and at the moment, the signals he received from the body before him were wavering and weak.

It didn't take an expert user of the Force to sense that the trooper was injured; the brown streaks of dried blood staining the white armor proved it. The Tusken Raiders had gotten to him, Kenobi surmised, surveying the distinct Gaderffii stick gashes on the torso and leg armor plates.

But why was a Stormtrooper here in the Wastes in the first place? Had the Empire found his hiding location already, or was Emperor Palpatine simply deploying troops to the nether regions of Tattooine as part of a routine border expansion? Either way, it was undeniable that the Empire was now powerful and vast enough to possess footholds in even the most hostile of locations – he would have to make plans to escape, if necessary, to an even remoter area. And as for the boy Luke—

"Who are you?"

The voice that warbled through the mouthpiece of the skull-like helmet sounded electronically distorted and tinny. The trooper stirred, attempting to raise himself up on an elbow, then fell back into the sand as the Force rippled through Kenobi in a wave of agony.

"Come with me," Kenobi said, his own voice dry from the sandstorm. Then he frowned. What had he just said? Why, in the name of the Force, did he just offer to save a sworn enemy? Was it because this man was injured? Was this the Jedi way? He could sense that the trooper didn't recognize him; he stood up and held out an arm. "Can you walk?"

The Stormtrooper said something over the wind about a broken leg, indicating his left lower thigh where the armor was punctured with a bloody hole.

Kenobi stretched out with the Force and numbed the pain. He was still puzzled as to why he was doing this. He searched his feelings for the expected warning sign to tell him to run his lightsaber through the Imperial foe, but it never came. He told himself again to walk away – it was not yet too late. He couldn't. A thought occurred to him that at this moment they were the only two living humans in the Jundland Wastes, and that if he turned his back on the man now, that number would undoubtedly fall.

He eased the Stormtrooper to his feet, and half-carried the figure through the toiling sand.

When they entered the door of the hovel several minutes later, Kenobi set the Stormtrooper on the floor in an awkward heap of white durasteel, then swiftly secured the remaining windows and doors. The room settled into a muffled, stuffy darkness, the storm buzzing mutely against the metal sand-shades.

He retrieved a fallen light orb that was lying haphazardly at his feet, plugged it into the nearest electrical socket. He turned to the trooper in the flickering red glow.

The armor-clad figure must have been watching him all this time, because now he spoke to the Jedi master, his broken mouthpiece distorting his words with uneven static. "Don't you know who I am?"

Kenobi couldn't help the smile from spreading across his face. It was just the thing he was going to say. Don't you know who I am? You're Obi-Wan Kenobi, renegade Jedi. And he would have been compelled by duty to kill the injured man on the spot.

"You're an Imperial Stormtrooper," Kenobi answered the man, walking to him. "You're one of the hundreds of thousands of clones that have been grown for this job, and you pledge allegiance to the Empire. Am I right?"

The Stormtrooper emitted an electronic bark that must have been a laugh. "Impressive knowledge… for a moisture farmer."

Oh, blast. "Is it?" Kenobi backtracked. That had been inexcusably sloppy of him. "It's simply talk I overheard from the cantinas in the city. Amazing what one might learn there." He peered into the Stormtrooper's blackened eyepieces and searched his trained instinct for any twinge of danger, for any sudden sign of recognition that would betray the fact that the trooper no longer simply thought of him as a "moisture farmer." To his immense relief, none came.

But nevertheless, when the Stormtrooper reached up to remove his helmet, Kenobi let one hand slip down to the lightsaber that was concealed beneath his robes – he had already made one mistake, and couldn't afford to make another. "I try to keep up with the news," he continued, feigning nonchalance as the trooper lifted the helmet away. "Everything is quite interesting, what with the new Empire—"

The sentence died on his tongue.

The man inside of the armor… well, it was a _female_.

More specifically it was a young woman with tumbling black hair, large honey-bronze eyes, and a full mouth that was currently curved in a weak smirk.

For a moment, there was nothing Kenobi could do but raise an eyebrow. How could he have not sensed that inside of all that armor was this – this _girl_? His Jedi skills were growing woefully dull indeed.

The woman's smirk widened in the brief silence, her tongue darting out to lick a cut in her chapped upper lip. "It's not polite to stare," she said in a raspy contralto that carried the undercurrent of pain and exhaustion.

Kenobi found himself. "Those – those wounds on your leg – they're from the Tuskens, aren't they? This is Tusken territory, and you shouldn't have worn Imperial armor here. I overheard that last season several Tuskens were killed in Mos Espa during a routine Stormtrooper inspection, and the tribes are still out for revenge. It may be effective for you to dress as a Stormtrooper in the cities – you'll earn the respect of most of the fearful degenerates there. But here in the remote areas it's safer to travel in your civilian garb."

"You say these things as though I have a choice in the matter, moisture farmer," the woman replied. The lilting grin continued playing on her lips, but her tone had become audibly firmer, more authoritative and sharp. "What do you think would happen to the Empire if all military personnel, like myself, decided to switch to their civilian clothes?"

"But I thought that real Stormtroopers—"

"Trust me, moisture farmer, you're not the only one who can't seem to believe I'm not an Imperial army brat playing dress-up with Father's spare armor."

"I was led to believe the Empire only used male clones for the job."

"And exclude the valuable services of its patriotic citizens?" She shook her head, grimaced in pain at the effort. "The clones are machines, nothing more. All they can do is follow orders and kill when they see red. So three years ago the Emperor opened the first Imperial Academy to recruit natural-borns like myself. Now that the war's over, he wants us to become an intelligent, skilled military that can root out all of the hidden Rebel scum. Tell that to your cantina friends."

Kenobi smiled outwardly, letting her words sink in. So the Empire had opened an Academy. Well, that was no surprise in itself. What made him anxious was that it had happened three long years ago and he had not heard anything about it during all this time. Apparently it was no state secret – this Stormtrooper hadn't hesitated telling a total stranger about its existence. It unnerved him that if she hadn't said anything, he could have stayed oblivious for decades, and when Luke came to be of Academy age, he could have let him slip right down the trap without knowing any better.

Suddenly, Kenobi felt old. Out of touch. Ineffectual. Here he was, a man in his prime, and already a remnant of the former Republic, still clinging to non-existent Republic ideas and fighting defeated Republic enemies. He ran his fingers through his untrimmed hair, shook out the gritty sand. "Look at you – you're injured badly and I've been carrying on idle chit-chat. I apologize," he said. "I'll dress your wounds, then take you to Mos Eisley when the sandstorm blows over. There, you can tell your story to my cantina friends yourself. It's about time they grew out of their chauvinist ways, don't you think?"

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It was only after Obi-Wan Kenobi had removed all of the Stormtrooper's armor plates that he realized the full extent of her injuries. The red gash across the abdomen, the blaster burns on the arms, the deep puncture wound on the left leg, still pulsing out a small stream of crimson. Blood, and the dirt and sand that had seeped through the armor's joints had turned her inner beige jumpsuit into a mottled ruin.

He laid her upon the narrow cot and patched her up the best he could with water, speed-heal bacta salve, and strips of cloth from an old tunic. She remained quiet through most of the ordeal, save for the suppressed winces and sharp intakes of breath, but when he lifted up the midsection of the jumpsuit to dress the wound on her narrow abdomen, she asked him, "Are you married, moisture farmer? Children?"

He stopped abruptly. She was regarding him with that odd, haughty little smile that bordered on a smirk. "I'm just trying to start a conversation," she rasped when he didn't respond. "You don't have to answer me."

Kenobi shook his head, resumed dabbling the cooling salve on the gash. "No, I'm a…" – he caught himself in time – "I'm a widower."

"When did she die?"

"More than five years ago," he said, almost without realizing it. "She died in childbirth at the end of the war. She was carrying twins. They didn't survive. And you? Are you married? Children?"

The trooper laughed quietly, a sound that Kenobi sensed was saturated in bitterness. "Married? Of course not. Stormtroopers aren't encouraged to form any romantic attachments while in service. But… I fell in love anyway, or at least in lust. His name was Nima, and he was in the same squadron as I was. We secretly pledged ourselves to each other. You could call it an engagement, I guess. We were deployed here last week in search of a hidden Rebel base, and just this morning our unit of five troopers set out to scour this region of the desert. But two hours into the journey, my betrothed…" She shrugged stiffly. "I'll save you from the syrupy details, farmer. It turns out he's a Rebel sympathizer, along with the rest of the unit. But he couldn't bring himself to kill me when the time came. Just settled for taking away my weapons, water, rations, speeder, and destroying the comlink in my helmet. Then he left me. They all left. The Tuskens came for me an hour later. Then the sandstorm. You know the rest."

_What a small galaxy_, Kenobi thought to himself, shaking his head in wry amusement. He blinked, and found that his eyes were slightly damp with ancient memories of a time that seemed so far removed from the present it hardly felt real. Carefully wrapping a band of cloth to her wound, he replied, slowly, "I know a long-time acquaintance who underwent a similar experience. His dearest friend – his _former_ friend, I should say – betrayed him one day, and betrayed his beautiful young wife, and went on a fool's journey and never came back. But it all happened a very long time ago, and the last time I checked, my acquaintance had put the past behind him and created a new life."

"Was he happy in his new life?"

"I don't remember. It was all so long ago."

The girl snorted disdainfully. "Human dramas. They're all the same across the galaxy. People falling in love, then falling out of love, then letting their silly little emotions end lives and create new ones. I prefer a state-of-the-art blaster, and the knowledge that what I'm doing for the Empire now can go down in history forever."

He looked at her. "Is that why you joined the Imperial Academy?"

"I had two options. I could remain on Naboo as the baroness's daughter, and stagnate for the rest of my life in an arranged marriage to a man three times older than I was. Or, I could enlist in the Academy and finally put my combat skills to use. I chose the latter."

"Yet when you met Nima you decided to pursue just the thing—"

"Call it a young girl's curiosity, moisture farmer," she interrupted, frowning. She sounded offended. "And besides, the experience has given me a new purpose."

"And what is that?" He finished tying together the ends of the cloth bandage, and stood up from his seat at her side. "That's all I can do for now. I'll fetch you a glass of water. I sense that you're parched."

"My purpose?" the trooper answered him as Kenobi walked to the closet-sized space that served as a kitchen. "To continue working for the Empire, of course. To bring the Rebels to justice and spread unity throughout the galaxy."

Kenobi retrieved the water jug from the shelf, popped off the cap, and filled an aluminum tumbler. "What about revenge?" he asked as casually as he could, returning to his chair at the bedside and handing her the tumbler.

She snatched it almost desperately from him, draining it without pausing to take a breath. He regarded the little streams trickling from the corners of her mouth and sliding down her slender neck, before finally soaking into the collar of her jumpsuit. When she finished, she was panting lightly; she wiped her lips with the back of her wrist and tossed the empty tumbler on the nightstand. "I wouldn't mind revenge," she said, grinning. "Revenge would taste very sweet."

"Experience has told me revenge is quite useless and sour," Kenobi replied amiably.

She scoffed. "What are you, a hokey Jedi warrior the Empire wants to see dead?"

He kept his pleasant countenance; she wasn't in earnest. "From what I gather, all the Jedi were killed during the war."

"No one knows for certain. In either case, they were a bizarre cult. Powerful, I'll grant you, but bizarre. They followed a ridiculous list of rules that banned them from everything – no feelings, no sex, no happiness. No revenge. Effectively, they were the mindless assassins of the Rebel movement. Machines, if you ask me. If I were a Jedi, I'm not sure I would have wanted to live."

Kenobi looked down at his blood-streaked hands, at the barely visible lightsaber scar running across his palm. Another memory of Mustafar. He had been clambering up the newly collapsed tower with Darth Vader pursuing several feet beneath him when the tip of Vader's saber had grazed his skin. It had been the slightest of touches – there had been no blood, nor pain, and he'd only discovered the wound when the scar began to rise. "Every life form across the galaxy feels the need to belong," he said finally.

"Not to a cult that doesn't let you live the way you want to."

He met her proud, unabashed gaze. "I agree."

"I choose to belong to the Empire, because it _lets_ me live. It gives me options. It _encourages_ me to seek revenge against the Rebels… and the Jedi assassins who work for them, if they exist at all. And you, moisture farmer? What do you belong to?"

Kenobi smiled dryly, chose not to offer a reply to this one. He turned away from her and rinsed his hands in the shallow basin on the nightstand. "You haven't yet told me your name," he remarked.

"In duty my code number is A-186," she answered with a grin, "but given the circumstances, you may call me Lena. What about you?"

Obi-Wan Kenobi considered this, watching the blood from his fingers swirling and dissolving into the water. "Well, Lena, A-186," he said at last, "given the circumstances you may call me Ben."

- - - - - - - - - - - -

The Imperial comlink from Lena's helmet was broken, but not beyond repair. Kenobi held the pellet-like device gingerly between his thumb and index finger, turning it so the bright, post-sandstorm moonlight shone on its silvery surface. He observed that the body was crushed, and several wires torn, but the damage was nothing that a skilled technician in Mos Eisley couldn't fix. Chuckling to himself, he dropped the comlink into his trouser pocket.

He remembered what Qui-Gon had always told him – the Force moved in mysterious ways, and often, negative events had the habit of transforming into blessings. There was never a moment he believed his old master's teachings more than now. This woman Lena had effectively given him a direct connection to the Empire; with some modifications, he could wire the comlink to receive Imperial communication interceptions, and the knowledge he could gain could be vast. Knowledge for himself, but more importantly, for that little tow-headed boy, Luke Skywalker…

Kenobi leaned against the rocky outer wall of his hovel and stared out into the evening desert, now flattened and still and quiet. The calm moments following sandstorms never failed to fill him with an immense, cool tranquility, but, like desert flowers, they always disappeared much too soon; the temperature would always skyrocket within a few hours and by morning the twin suns would resume baking the dusty earth with their relentless rays. He almost regretted that Lena, sleeping soundly upon his low cot, would wake to the unforgiving Tattooinian dawn without having experienced this quiet and gentle evening.

Lena. He let his thoughts ruminate over her. Beneath the scratches and dust she had an almost… _delicate_ face, he decided. That is, when she wasn't toying with that haughty smirk, or pinning him with the inquisitive, yet completely merciless stare. He had observed her sleeping figure warily as he'd rummaged through the Imperial armor at the foot of the cot – he had realized how noble her features were, and how her large eyes and full, bow-shaped mouth reminded him of the ancient statues of female Jedi masters that used to line the temple. Didn't she say she was a duchess on the planet of Naboo? He no longer found her claim to be quite as difficult to believe.

Awake, however, she was as vicious as a krayt dragon. Duchess or not, she was first and foremost a Stormtrooper, and a loyal, fiercely intelligent one at that, with a tongue that talk through durasteel. And perhaps, in time, the pain of her lover's betrayal would harden her into someone infinitely more deadly, as betrayal often had this unfortunate effect on higher life forms—

"Lovely night."

Kenobi wheeled around.

She was standing in the open doorframe, the blanket draped around her like a cloak. He hadn't sensed her coming, and he admonished himself for focusing too much of his attention inward, for losing himself in his thoughts and failing to stretch out with his senses. He smiled apologetically. "You surprised me. You should be in bed."

"Not during a night like this, Ben. I woke up feeling as though I was back on Naboo during one of the rainy seasons."

"How is your leg?"

"The salve's working remarkably. I'll manage," she replied, hopping to him on one foot and steadying herself against the wall with her hands. "It's so beautiful now. It was never like this during all the previous nights I was here."

"It is nature's way of ending a sandstorm." He watched her as she neared him, felt the Force ripple with – _something_ – that he couldn't quite place. A tension of sorts, like the vibration from a taught wire after it has been plucked. "Are you in pain, Lena?" He searched her with his gaze. "How are your other—"

"I'll manage," she repeated. The unmistakable tone in her voice signified the end of the argument.

Still, something was out of place…

A heartbeat later, the confusion did not dissipate when Kenobi found that she had closed the distance between them and was now leaning against him, threading her arms around his waist and nestling her head in the base of his neck.

_What in the name of the Force–?_

He couldn't seem to move, resisted the urge to pull back from her. It would have been the Jedi way to do pull back, to pull _far_ back, because he was not _supposed_ to – but no, that wouldn't have been the right thing to do. She was holding him in an embrace, pressing her small, warm body into his, and she was whispering into his chest, her heated breath tickling his skin through the tunic fabric, "Oh, Ben. Oh, Ben."

"What… what's the matter?"

"I can't bear it any longer, Ben. He left me. He _left_ me! I'm so alone. Hold me. I don't want to be alone. Please, just hold me."

Oh, dear. He hesitated, then wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close. "I'm sorry."

"Why? It's not your fault! It's _his_ fault!" She peered up at him with her devastating bronze eyes. "If it weren't for you, I'd be dead. Thank you, Ben. You – you've done so much for me and I don't even know you. How can I show my gratitude?"

Before Kenobi could speak, she had taken his face between her palms and she was kissing him. Her lips were crushed against his and they were hot and soft and pliant and tasting vaguely of the sweet dried fruits he had given to her for a dinner meal.

Blast it. He closed his eyes…

And the kiss was over.

She had pulled away, and once more, she was observing him with that wondrous gaze. "Heavens, I shouldn't have done that." She timidly lowered her hands, stroking his beard on the way down. "That was horrible of me."

"No, no, it was…" He searched for words, faltered.

"You're very handsome," she resumed. "You're so handsome and kind, and it's a shame you're living alone out here. Because you're just so… wonderful, and… you know what else you are?"

"What?"

A small, murmuring silence settled between them. Then, "You're also a _thief_!"

Kenobi felt the Force explode through him in warning; he attempted to duck away, but too late – the glinting steel blade was already pressed to his throat.

"Did you really think I was interested in you, Ben?" the wielder of the knife hissed. "What would a first-class Stormtrooper like me want with Bantha fodder like you?"

"Don't try it, Lena!"

"_I'm_ the one giving the orders, moisture farmer," she snapped, digging the knife into his skin for emphasis. "Don't underestimate me – injured or not, I can kill you with a finger. Do you understand? Now tell me. You took something from me. Where is it?"

The comlink. He couldn't give it up so easily. _Blast!_ How in the name of the Force had he fallen into these circumstances so quickly? How was he, a Jedi master, now pinned helplessly against a wall by a girl with a broken leg? Inexcusable. He had felt the warning signs from the very beginning, and yet like a Padawan he had disregarded them and opted to act from visual cues instead. This forsaken desert was destroying him from the inside, eating at his judgment, corroding his mind. Inexcusable.

Kenobi gathered his meager options. He could disarm her with the Force, which would give him the time he needed to grab his lightsaber and – do what? Kill her? She did not pose a mortal threat, so to end her life would be forbidden by the Jedi code. But if he used his lightsaber to defend himself and did not kill her, he would leave open the opportunity for her to reveal his Jedi identity to the Empire. All would be lost then, for Luke and for the future of the Jedi Order…

Or he could play along with the charade, feign ignorance. It was as good a plan as any other. "Lena, I don't know what you're talking about," he said.

"Don't pretend to be so innocent. I saw you snooping through my armor. But you weren't just poking it around in curiosity – no, you knew exactly what you were doing. You took the comlink, didn't you? Now why would a moisture farmer take an Imperial comlink? Or _are_ you a moisture farmer, Ben? After all, no sane individuals would choose to live out here in the Wastes except for moisture farmers… and people who want to hide from the Empire!"

"I admit I have a passing interest in mechanics—"

"Oh? That's good for you, Ben," she cut in. She smirked, then dropped her expression into a cast-iron glare. "Give me back my comlink."

"Lena, please, can we negotiate—"

"How's this for negotiation?" She punched him in the stomach.

But not quite. Kenobi sensed the disturbance a split second before her fist made contact; he trapped her wrist, twisted her aside, and pivoted from the wall. She stumbled forward on her good leg, clambering for balance.

"Don't fight me, Lena."

"I've been in worse situations." She spun to face him. "And won."

She launched herself at him; Kenobi bent away, but she grabbed his arm and used the leverage to balance herself in the air. And then he sensed it. He attempted to avoid the hit, but her grip held him immobile. She backhanded him squarely in the temple with the hilt of the knife.

Stars erupted behind his eyes. Then fire, then darkness. Kenobi floundered backwards, unable to see through the momentary blackout, the agony reeling throughout his head. He finally found his footing against a rocky protrusion in the ground, and clung on tightly to the moment of clarity it offered. He struggled for the Force, used it to numb the pain spiraling through him. He felt warm liquid trickling down the side of his face.

When his vision swam back from the blackness, it was to an image of Lena, standing before him with the knife poised at his throat. "I have good reason to believe you're aiding the Rebel movement," she said.

So now she knew.

Kenobi willed the fuzziness in his mind to go away. The deadliest enemy for a Jedi was an unclear mind, a loss of focus. Focus. _Focus_! He sucked in a breath… and found the way. He reached out with the Force and touched Lena's presence. It was strong, blinding, but not unbendable. All it needed was a little persuasion…

"You don't believe I'm aiding the Rebel movement," Kenobi intoned. His voice was soothing, vacuous, foreign. Precise.

He sensed Lena's presence hesitate, then waver like a licking flame. "I don't believe…" she repeated, a tiny, confused frown marring her forehead, "I don't believe you're aiding the Rebel movement."

"You don't want to kill me. You'll take the weapon from my throat and hand it to me now."

The response came quicker this time as the connection gathered strength. "I don't want to kill you. Here's the knife," she obeyed. She lowered the blade and put it in his outstretched hand.

It was his own utility knife that he kept in the toolbox on the shelf beside the cot; he folded down the blade and slipped it into his pocket. "You want to forget about all that has happened tonight."

"I want to forget about everything tonight."

"And you want to sleep now. You want to sleep and forget."

"I want to sleep now…" Her heavy lashes quivered, drooped, and finally closed over misty, honey-colored eyes. "I want to sleep…" She fell forward limply; Kenobi caught her and scooped her up in his arms. He observed her cautiously. She was thoroughly relaxed and lost in a deep sleep, her head lolling back and breathing soft, even breaths through parted lips.

Kenobi sighed and carried her back to the hovel.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

To be continued. In the meantime, please leave feedback!


	2. An Intrication

THE QUARRY

By: Scatterheart a.k.a. Hallospacegirl

- - - - - - - - - - - -

CHAPTER TWO: AN INTRICATION

The first sun was barely peeking over the edge of the tawny horizon when Obi-Wan Kenobi parked his landspeeder outside of Kibby's Fix-It Electronics Boutique. "Mos Eisley best metal fixer and seller! No metal part too broken for Kibby fix!" the banner over the tiny doorway proclaimed in fragmented Basic. Kenobi hopped out of the speeder, pulled his hood over his face, and ducked into the dusty store.

Several customers, a Twi'lek and three overweight Gamorreans, were already scrounging about the secondhand junk bins; the inhabitants of Mos Eisley preferred to shop at dawn, when the suns had not yet heated the polluted air to an unbearable temperature, and it was for this reason that Kenobi chose to venture into the city during the cruelest part of the afternoon, when the majority of life forms – including Stormtroopers – were havened within their quarters.

Today, however, was an exception.

Kenobi picked his way through the piles of spare parts to the low counter, where the diminutive Chadra-Fan was dozing with her downy head resting on her claw-like hands. "Good morning, Kibby."

The Chadra-Fan awoke in a flurry of high-pitched snuffles and squeaks. "Ben!" she squealed, blinking her round, black eyes at him. "Kibby not see Ben in the shop in many, many years! Welcome, welcome!"

"You exaggerate, Kibby. It's only been a month since I've asked you to fix my landspeeder engine. It's working very smoothly, by the way."

"Ben is Kibby best customer!" She eagerly wiggled her large, hairless ears. "Kibby can help Ben with something?"

He smiled at her enthusiasm – of course, most of her loyalties lay with the copious credits he carried inside of his sleeves, but he could also sense that he was growing on her, and that she would not betray him if the Empire decided to come knocking at the door._ If_ the Empire decided to come. It was unlikely a squadron of Stormtroopers would pay any attention to a Chadra-Fan's tiny shop… and that had been precisely why Kenobi selected the inconspicuous place.

He swiftly glanced around him. The Twi'lek had left, and the three Gamorreans were engaged in a snuffling, heated discussion over radiator parts. He turned back to Kibby and retrieved the Imperial comlink from his pocket.

"I need you to make an exact replica of this," he said, placing the comlink softly on the counter. "I need you to do it now."

Kibby picked up the crushed pellet, rotating it in her furry palm, and sucked pensively at her elongated front teeth. "Exact replica? Communication device inside broken in fifty places. Kibby fix in two days."

"No, I want an exact replica, broken pieces and all. No – no. There won't be enough time for that. Listen, I just want a replica of the outside. You can fill the inside with scraps, bolts, anything. But make the outside look identical to this one. That should be simple enough."

She blinked at him, slowly. "Why Ben want this?"

"To give to a friend," he said, smiling.

She shook her head in confusion, squeaking and growling in her native tongue.

"Please, humor me," Kenobi urged. He crossed his arms in front of him and let the credit chips in his sleeves jingle musically in front of her oversized ears.

The ears twitched, perked. Their owner grinned at Kenobi brightly. "All right, Ben. Kibby agree," she chirped in Basic. "When Ben want this?"

"Today. Right now."

"_Now_? Impossible! Kibby need afternoon!"

"I know you can do it now, Kibby. You've never let me down, and I trust you. I'll stay here until you're done. I'll even buy that collection of electronic junk parts you tried to sell me last time." He nodded toward the small, brimming box behind the counter. "And I'll pay you double. For everything."

The Chandra-Fan glanced down at the broken comlink in her palm, and looked up at him with a vaguely ill expression plastered over her features. "Kibby… agree to Ben. Ben crazy hermit."

"Thank you, my small friend," he replied. "But you'll have to try harder than that next time. I've been called much worse."

An hour later, with a small canvas satchel clutched tightly in his hands, Kenobi rushed out of the shop, dove into his landspeeder, and swooped away amid a cloud of dust.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Back inside the hovel, quietly so as not to disturb the sleeping trooper, Obi-Wan Kenobi opened the narrow door at the end of the kitchen and slipped inside the small, overflowing workshop room. He locked the door behind him, flicked on a light orb, and set the canvas satchel upon the cluttered desk.

There was no more time to deliberate – he had deliberated all through the speeder ride back, and had finally promised himself to do this. And if the plan failed… well, if that was the will of the Force, then he would have no choice but to let it be.

And Luke. He sensed the physical distance yawning between them, a distance that would widen million-fold if he followed through with this plan. It would hopefully be a brief separation, but it would be long enough and far enough for him to err, lose control, fail the boy. Break his promise to the future of the Jedi Order.

No, he would not fail. He was doing this _for_ Luke, for the prophecy, and even if he failed, the boy would not fail himself.

Kenobi sucked in a deep breath. There was no time.

He emptied the satchel upon the desk. Out tumbled the contents of the box Kibby had tried to sell him a month ago – he had not considered the odds and ends useful then, but when he had noticed it in the shop earlier in the morning, it had struck him with the idea for the plan.

He rummaged through the malfunctioning spark plugs, transmitters, batteries, and light orb crystals until he fished out what he was looking for – the Imperial retina-scan unit and military identification badge. The latter two items had been undoubtedly acquired last season during a riot in Mos Eisley between the fiercely protective Devonian storeowners and Imperial search troops. Several Stormtroopers had been killed, including this – Kenobi read the name on the rusty badge – General Peregrin Felth. Kibby must have pilfered the items from Felth's dead body during the chaos.

Kenobi picked up the nearest cloth, saturated it in cleaner oil, and polished the rust away from the badge. Then he took the squarish retina-scan unit and cracked it open. Inside, tangled within the wires, lay General Felth's retina identification card against a miniature laser. He scraped at it with his pinkie until it fell out of the unit, and tossed it into a darkened corner of the room. He opened the safe beneath the desk and found his own retina card that had been issued to him during his years of service for the Republic. It was dusty from half a decade of neglect, but still effective nonetheless. He blew the soft gray powder from the blue-green surface and slid it into place within the scan unit.

The unit emitted a series of quiet electronic beeps; Kenobi snapped it back together and shone the light into his eye. "Identity confirmed. General Peregrin Felth," the machine enunciated after a pause.

He grinned and slipped both the scan unit and badge into his tunic.

Then he grabbed the holo-projector from the safe, popped several batteries into the back, and contacted Bail Organa.

At first the blue hologram fuzzed with overwhelming static, but after Kenobi wiped the thick layer of dust from the receiver surface, the stately figure of the Alderaanian senator coalesced into view on top of the desk. He had not changed much during these five years, the Jedi observed. Perhaps had gained some weight and opted for a longer hairstyle. But it was still Bail Organa, the politician who had worked with him during the days of the Republic, and the staunch friend who had fought at his side during the ensuing war. The foster father of Luke's twin sister. Kenobi suddenly felt an odd, slightly bittersweet sensation that he had traveled back in time.

"Bail? It's Obi-Wan Kenobi," he said.

"_Obi-Wan_?" The senator in the hologram was squinting. Then he let out an amazed laugh. "My word, it _is_ you! Obi-Wan Kenobi, my friend, I can recognize that handsome face from anywhere. You haven't changed a bit."

"It gladdens me to see you after all these years, Bail," he whispered. But it was not the time for pleasantries. "Please keep your voice down. I have something to tell you that's of the utmost importance."

"Yes, yes of course." The jubilant beam upon the senator's face faded, and he leaned in confidentially. "But wait – before you do, let me tell _you_ one thing. The Empire thinks you're dead, Obi-Wan. They issued an official certificate just last week. It's time for you to finally get out of that sandbox and come to Alderaan. You know, change your name, start a Jedi academy at our secret Rebel base, train the young children of the Rebellion—"

"You know I have duties here. Anakin Skywalker's son is the prophecy that will save us from the Empire. I can sense it in the Force."

The blue, flickering image of Organa looked pained. "The Rebel movement isn't gaining any momentum. There's little motivation among the troops, because there's no one who truly _believes_ that we can win a fight against the Empire. We need your guidance."

"Patience, my friend."

"You're our only hope."

"No, Bail." He smiled, a little ruefully. "I'm not your only hope. Have patience and you'll see. Perhaps the information that I've gained can help you bolster Rebellion morale."

"What – what information?"

"A Stormtrooper."

"A _what_?"

He glanced furtively at the locked door, and returned his attention to the incredulous Senator Organa. "It's a long story, Bail, and I don't have time to tell it. Currently, I have with me a Stormtrooper – she claims her name is Lena, license code A-186. She doesn't know my identity. She's been stranded here, and I can sense that she wants to fly off of Tattooine as soon as she can. I want you to send a replica Imperial transport ship to pick us up at the Mos Eisley spaceport. The pilot can fly us to your Rebel base, where the troops there can take her in for questioning. She has information. She's valuable."

"Hold on, Obi-Wan." Organa held up a hand. "What you're suggesting is dangerous, for you and for us. If we take in this trooper and she escapes and leaks the location of the base to the Empire, then the Rebellion might as well pack up and commit mass suicide right now."

"Yes, I understand. But Bail, her license number – A-186 – she's a first-class Stormtrooper. If I recall correctly from the days of the Republic, the headquarters of the first-class troopers are always located within the primary Senatorial planet._ Imperial_ planet, in this case. Once she divulges that information to your Rebel base, they can find the location of the Emperor and launch an offensive."

The senator sighed, steepling his fingers to his mouth as his brow deepened its furrow. He was silent for a long time, staring at the ground, before returning Kenobi's gaze. "I'm not going to lie to you. This information… if we could get our hands on this and topple the Emperor, it would… it would have the potential to stop the war before it starts." He shook his head. "But on the other hand, if the plan blows up in our faces, your smashing entrance back into the limelight's not going to fare well with the Empire. You're not going to be able to escape the Imperials this time – they've grown stronger and they've expanded their borders – and I don't want to see you die."

"Bail, I know my purpose in the grand makings of the Force. For Luke and for democracy and for the Jedi, and if I happen to—"

He shook his head in frustration. "No, I meant _you_, my friend. Not this entire Jedi purpose thing. If the plan fails, what would happen to Obi-Wan Kenobi, the man?" he asked.

Kenobi rubbed at the soreness behind his eyes. "I know of the dangers. I'll be leaving Tattooine and I'll be leaving Luke Skywalker behind, and if something goes wrong, I might not ever return to my duty. Even now the Imperials might be intercepting this holo-projector signal – now you understand why I haven't contacted you for all these years, my dear friend? But this opportunity… this has the potential to save millions of lives, and you know it, Bail. I'm willing to make the sacrifice."

"You always are, Obi-Wan." The small holographic image of Bail Organa bleakly rocked back on its heels. "All right, give me the details."

"Aha, I knew you would come to your senses," he said, flashing the senator a short grin. "I'll be posing as General Peregrin Felth of the Imperial army. His license number is AA-014. Make sure the pilot of your replica Imperial ship addresses me accordingly and knows all of the Imperial procedures. Lena, A-186, can't discover our identities until we're safely at the Rebel base, or I'm afraid she'll sabotage the ship. Her combat skills are…" – he unconsciously touched the wound on his temple – "…considerable."

"You won't have to worry about that. The pilot I'm sending you, Crix Nadine, has firsthand knowledge of Imperial protocol. He was a rising hotshot in the Imperial army before joining the Rebellion at the end of the war. Oh, but don't worry, Obi-Wan, Nadine's dedicated to the Rebel cause. He's as loyal as they come. You'll call him by his alias, Pieter Corlis, when you meet him aboard the ship."

"How long will it take for the ship to arrive at Mos Eisley?"

"If we dispatch it now, it should be there in about two hours."

The Force bubbled around Kenobi lightly like packets of air chasing each other up from the bottom of a pond. Slowly but surely, the woman outside was rising from the dreamless clutches of the Force-induced sleep. He quickly grabbed the holo-projector with both hands. "Excellent, Bail. Do it. I have to go – I'll be contacting you shortly."

"Obi-Wan—"

He flicked the hologram off. And realized that the fake Imperial comlink was still in his possession. Blast it.

Digging it out from the pile of spare parts, he slipped quietly out the door. The main room was bathed in warm, early morning sunshine that spilled across the shelves and landed upon the blanketed figure in the cot. She was still asleep, but barely, stirring slightly in the bed and wiping a curl of dark hair away from her cheek with a forearm.

Kenobi crouched down by her armor, fitted the comlink into the helmet. It clicked into place crisply, and he sensed the bubble of sleep bursting in a silent little pop.

He stood up, ambling as steadily as he could to the wooden table. She didn't realize what he had done. And perhaps this course of action did not exactly follow the Jedi code in regards to honesty, he mused to himself. But at least the genuine comlink was his.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

There was something about this Ben that she couldn't quite lay a finger on. She followed his movements from beneath her barely parted eyelids, watched him idly swiping sand from the dilapidated table beside the window, watched him hang his heavy brown cloak upon a nail on the wall, watched him chew on a small strip of dried jerky. The actions were perfectly mundane, yet there was something about how he performed them that didn't seem ordinary – perhaps it was the way he navigated through the unbearably cramped hovel without disturbing so much as the dust upon the shelves. Perhaps it was the way his limbs moved so fluidly beneath the threadbare, multi-layered white tunic. Perhaps it was his eyes.

They were grayish blue like the cloudless sky after a thunderstorm, clear and unpiercing. And they were looking into hers.

"Good morning, Lena," he said with a serene little smile.

Yes, it was _that_. How he _knew_ she was awake, even though she hadn't moved nor altered her breathing patterns since she'd been jolted from a dreamless sleep several minutes ago.

She let her eyes flutter open. "Good morning, Ben."

"How did you sleep?"

She frowned. Something was odd, out of place. She felt as though she had dragged herself up after a night of zero-g clubbing, juri juice and deathsticks, a guilty ache throbbing in her head to remind her that she _should_ be remembering certain details of an evening that she had conveniently drugged to oblivion. Except now, there was no pain; only that nagging guilt to search her mind for memories lost.

And how she had been suddenly jerked awake confused her as well, made her apprehensive. She had heard no sound, felt no shake, distinguished no violent shift in the light that had been soaking through the thin skin of her eyelids. All she had seen was Ben, walking silently from the foot of the cot to the table by the window, then swiping sand away from the wooden surface with a corner of his sleeve.

One thing she knew for certain. He was hiding something crucial and she was too inexperienced to discern it.

"I slept fine," she answered the man perfunctorily. "No dreams."

"Good. How are your injuries?"

She gave herself a mental check, found that aside from the dull burn in her punctured leg and the general fatigue in her muscles, her body seemed to be roughly intact. "I feel… all right, Ben." She reminded herself that twelve hours ago she had been a shuddering breath away from meeting the Ultimate Maker, and she narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "How did you…"

"The speed-heal bacta salve performs wonders," he explained. "It lessens pain and can repair flesh wounds within a day. Bones need only two. It's a commodity one can't do without in these Wastes."

"Why don't you use it on that bruise?" She gestured to the disfiguration on his left temple; it was purplish and swollen, with a red scab plowing savagely through the middle.

"I prefer to save my stock. The traders visit the cities only once a decade. In any case…" He touched the wound lightly with a finger, giving her an almost sheepish smile. "I should know better than to walk into my utility shelf."

"Ah. I see." She pursed her lips in an outward expression of concern. Of course, he was lying. Even a first-year Academy cadet would know that the only way he could have received that bruise would have been to collide into the utility shelf at sprinting speed. And she had already seen him cruise about the room more effortlessly than a man walking through a vacant lot.

So why would he lie about this? What had he done during her sleep that he considered unfit for her to know? She felt a twinge of restless annoyance, more at her own lack of observational skills than anything else, and she sat up in the cot, her abdomen aching faintly in protest. "Thank you for all you've done, moisture farmer, but I think it's time for me to leave this place."

"Leave now? Lena, your leg isn't completely healed," the man protested. "Walk on it an you might sustain another fracture."

"I'll be careful, Ben," she responded. She didn't know why she was suddenly so anxious to get out of the claustrophobic little hovel, preferably away from him. He made her vaguely unsettled and untethered, like a little boat tossed about an ocean. For the Stormtrooper, for A-186, a loss of situational control could be a lethal mistake. Though the man Ben didn't strike her as dangerous, she was convinced he was – whatever he was – he definitely wasn't a moisture farmer.

Better to leave now than steep in regrets later.

She gingerly moved from the cot and tested the ground with both feet. The puncture in her injured leg flared briefly in pain, but it was nothing she hadn't handled before. She leaned into it, flexed it, felt the pain abate as her body adjusted to the pressure.

"How will you make contact with your superiors?" Ben was asking, stepping to her and holding out an arm.

She instinctively edged him away as she walked evenly to the pile of armor at the end of the cot – her leg burned only moderately, and she didn't need his assistance. "I'll call them with my comlink."

"I remember you told me that your comlink had been broken."

She stopped. Damnation. He was right; she had almost forgotten the moment when Nima had wrested the helmet from her head and crushed the comlink with the butt of his blaster. The sound had reverberated all the way down to the bottom of her gut and she had grabbed his hand, told him not to do this. Kill her, but not this. _Don't leave._ And she had stared into his helmeted face, and seen only the reflection of her own pathetic sniveling countenance reflected in the visor…

She knelt by her armor, fumbled for the helmet, and detached the comlink from the mouthpiece. It rattled uselessly in her hand like a capsule filled with metal scrapings.

Rebel scum.

Throwing it to the dusty floor, she turned to Ben. "Unfixable. I'm looking forward to the day I can cleave his damned head with a well-aimed blaster shot."

He cocked an eyebrow. "Revenge?"

"Call it target practice, Ben," she replied, and grinned. "I'll need transport to Mos Eisley. I can seek out the patrol troopers stationed there. They'll allow me to arrange for a starship to fly me back to the base."

He bent down beside her and ran finger down the singed leg plate. "You'll take your armor?"

She glanced sharply at the man, but his genial face betrayed no emotion. "Of course I'm taking my armor. I don't plan on leaving Imperial property here."

"Then let me help you transport it—"

"I don't think so." She grabbed his sleeve as he reached out to take the helmet. A flat, metallic rectangle tumbled out of the fabric and clattered into the white durasteel.

She snatched the item up. She knew it – this man had been hiding something all along, and this was it.

An Imperial badge.

She stared at the metal plaque in disbelief.

General Peregrin Felth, license number AA-014.

She glared at man at her side. "How did you get this?"

"Accept my apologies, A-186." His features had taken on an intense, serious cast. "A dozen Rebels have infiltrated into the Tattooinian troops, and I had to be certain you were not one of them before revealing my identity. Here." He retrieved from his tunic an Imperial retina-scan identification unit, shone the red laser into his eye, and waited until the machine emitted a short beep. "Identity confirmed. Peregrin Felth," the machine proclaimed tinnily, then deactivated.

"I pledge my wholehearted allegiance to the Empire, but I admit I'm not the best loved by my superiors," he said, tucking the retina-scan back into his sleeve. "Several quarrels and a scandal later, they effectively stripped me of my rank by assigning me to this thankless location. Then I suppose they thought I had died during the first Tusken raid in Mos Espa five years ago, so they broke all contact with me and assigned a new general. A much more qualified one, I have to say. I spent an eternity dodging the Rebels and trying to negotiate back into my sector, but the damned bureaucracy held me at a standstill. In anger, in revenge, I decided to take up this simpler and safer way of life."

She could only nod. This was… this was unbelievable, what he was telling her. Yet he had the Imperial retina-scan to prove it. He was General Peregrin Felth of the Imperial Army.

"But this life isn't exactly what I expected," Ben – Felth – resumed in the wake of her silence. "Now, instead of avoiding Rebels and blaster shots, I was avoiding late night Tusken raids. Lena, this is too inglorious. The prospect of dying at the hands of the Tuskens disgusts me. I was made for the Empire, not this."

She found her tongue. "So what will you do?"

"Simple. Make my way back to the nearest Imperial base and work my way up the ranks. Of course, I'll be needing to travel with you." He smiled. "I've managed to contact the Outer Rim Omega space station near Alderaan, less than four parsecs away. They only relented to send down a ship after learning I had you under my custody. "

"And if I choose to go by myself?" she countered, narrowing her eyes.

"The Empire believes I turned to stardust years ago, Lena. They won't allow me to board the ship alone because they'll suspect I'm a spy for the Rebellion. Only the two of us… together. I saved your life, A-186, and if I recall correctly, Academy doctrine states that a debt owed to a fellow militia member needs to be repaid."

That was true. She exhaled sharply. She wanted, no – _needed_ – to fly out of this hellish planet, preferably with those memories of betrayal behind her, but she couldn't, not with a mysterious man who filled her gut with an unmoored, drifting sensation. He was still hiding in his weather-beaten hands much higher stakes than she could see. General or not, ally or not, she hated the greater power he was wielding, and the way his mellifluous voice and clear eyes could sway her mind as though he controlled it…

But if she didn't trust him, whom could she trust? She didn't possess much of an option there. He was an ally, she told herself firmly. He was even a friend. He had saved her life, and it would make no sense for him to now take it from her.

No. This whole business was too risky – she didn't know him.

Nevertheless, when she opened her mouth, she found the assent pouring fluidly out, almost against her will, "I'll go with you."

"Then it is settled," he said, rising to his feet and dusting the sand from his knees. "I'll pack my belongings and contact the ship. They'll be ready at the Mos Eisley starport in two hours." He opened a narrow wooden door and disappeared into an inner room.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Obi-Wan Kenobi let out a long breath and gathered his bearings. _A Jedi should feel no emotion. Emotion leads to a loss of focus, and eventually to the dark side. Be calm. Calm._

He decided he could allow himself the tiniest hint of celebration, and laughed quietly to himself in the darkness of the small workshop room.

He had done it. In the name of the Force, he had done it.

He picked up the holo-projector and dialed it to Bail Organa's frequency; the senator flickered into being a moment later.

"It's working, Bail. She's agreed."

The senator made a sound that fell between a triumphant laugh and an apprehensive groan. "By the Maker, Obi-Wan—"

"You may personally thank me or punish me for my rash actions later, Bail," he replied. "Is the ship ready?"

"Already dispatched."

"Then I'll be seeing you before the Alderaanian day is over."

"Just like old times, my friend."

"Just like old times." He swallowed the strange knot that had formed in his throat, and deactivated the hologram.

There was still much to be done.

First, his appearance. He surveyed the tattered cloths draping over his body in shades of dusty brown, a mixture of Jedi and moisture farming garb, paired with combat boots and an old Republic utility belt. The appearance still leaned more towards Jedi Master than Tattooinian native, he decided; he wouldn't be surprised if an older Imperial guard from the days of the Republic recognized his robes and bearded face during his prolonged public exposure at the city and the crowded starport.

Kenobi pensively ran his fingers through his coarse beard. And stopped. Yes, yes, this would definitely have to go. Truth be told, he had grown this beard not for himself but for Anakin, really, to give his features an appearance of age and authority over the playfully impertinent young Padawan.

He flipped through the counter for his razor and mirror, remembering the first time Anakin had seen him with the dark blond beard covering his chin. The boy – no, he had already been a teenager then – had laughed in amusement and said, "Unbelievable, Obi-Wan. You look old enough to be my father now."

And he had countered, good humoredly, "It's _Master_ Obi-Wan to you. And if you insist that I look like your father, then act like my son, Anakin."

Act like my son.

Kenobi finished shearing the last piece of the beard away from his jaw, watched it float to the ground, and let his reverie float down with it like a lost autumn leaf. For good measure, he evened the ends of his hair as well, separated it into a clean part and smoothed it down. Then he pulled from the safe beneath his desk a folded pile of starchy black and red fabric – it was an official suit the Council had insisted he wore to receptions and galas and other diplomatic affairs in which Kenobi had found no interest, and it was a restricting thing, its high collar and sleek tailoring hearkening to the later Imperial uniform design.

He shed off the Jedi robes and struggled into it.

"Uncivilized," he muttered, clipping his lightsaber to the discreet band sewn on the inner lining of the jacket. He dropped the Imperial comlink into his pocket, and tied the uniform's remaining wide red sash around his waist. And then he smiled into the mirror, at the unrecognizably youthful face smiling back.

Qui-Gon Jinn would have been proud.

He became aware of an almost… restless sensation churning through him, not entirely unpleasant, and it took a moment before he recognized it to be anticipation.

No, he absolutely couldn't feel this way. Anticipation meant selfishness; selfishness tore at the Jedi code. He was undergoing this trip for Luke and the Rebellion, and if the Rebellion required him to stay on the windswept desert dunes of Tattooine for the rest of his life, he would have gladly agreed to it. He calmed himself, smoothing his hands over the front of his jacket. _A Jedi should feel no emotion. Emotion leads to a loss of focus, and eventually to the dark side. _

It was time to go.

Kenobi flipped off the light orb and left the room.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

To be continued… (I have several following chapters already written, so expect quick updates in the next week.) Thanks for reviewing! And please, keep doing so.


	3. Flight

THE QUARRY

By: Scatterheart a.k.a. Hallospacegirl

- - - - - - - - - - - -

CHAPTER THREE: FLIGHT

The late morning suns, coupled with the narrow Mos Eisley alleyways and the heat-emanating bodies of the hundreds of species of life forms hurrying home from market sent fire soaking into the black oven of his uniform. Kenobi pulled at the collar, wiped the sweat from his face, and turned to the woman beside him. "We should be nearing the spaceport soon, Lena." His voice sounded drained to his own ears. "Are you feeling all right?"

"Better than you, I suspect," she replied with a smirk. Her bronze eyes, glinting like gold in the sunlight, were openly running over him, searching into his face in a way he had not seen her do before. "You know, General, in that suit and without that beard, I can hardly recognize you now."

"One must do what's necessary when returning to the Empire," he replied.

"Even when it amounts to torture?" She flicked at the front of his jacket with her forefinger.

"It's unfortunate."

She laughed, and hooked her thumbs through the rope straps that crossed over her shoulders and under her arms. Prior to their departure, she had tried her armor together with rope that she had taken from his hovel, and was now wearing the durasteel bundle as a backpack, with the exception of the leg armor plate, which she had clasped tightly to her injured leg. "If there's sufficient time, General," she said, "I'd like to get a drink at that stall up ahead. Rumor has it the best juri juice in the galaxy is served in Tattooine. I'd like to try it before I leave this place forever."

He recalled the first – and last – time he had downed a glass of that pungently sweet drink, how the alcohol had shot through his brain and disconnected him from the Force and indeed from all semblance of coherent thought.

"It's strong, Lena," he cautioned.

"That's why I drink it," she responded, springing ahead in the crowded market street and knocking aside a grumbling hooded figure that stepped out of her way and folded its arms disapprovingly into its copious poncho. "Three glasses should be no problem. Maybe you can do with less—"

Kenobi felt the Force lurch in warning, saw the hooded figure behind her slide its arms from the poncho as the glint of something metallic in its right hand caught the rays of the sun…

"Lena, watch out!"

He ran to her in two strides, grabbed her shoulders and tackled her to the ground as a torrent of blaster beams scraped over the both of them.

And suddenly the crowd became a screaming frenzy, all frantic arms and legs as the hundreds of different life forms attempted to scamper away from the hooded man with the blaster pistol.

Kenobi pulled the woman to her feet; they both dodged another blaster shot that hit home in a green-skinned Rodian behind them.

"No, Darklighter! Don't get the woman – first get the officer in black!" He discerned a gruff, firm voice shout in Basic among the cacophony of screams. A tall, aging man in gray stepped behind the hooded one and aimed his own pistol at the Jedi master.

In the name of – !

The Rebellion. Kenobi found that he recognized the older man to be Jan Dodonna, an official from the days of the Republic that he had worked with on occasion. He sensed that Dodonna did not return the recognition. He stopped himself from shouting Jan's name, then ducked another beam that grazed a hair's width from his forearm. But perhaps it was all for the better that both Rebels believed him to be an Imperial officer – this was not the best place and time for Lena to discover his true identity. If she did, she was able to shrug off her armor in a flash, disappear behind a storefront, contact the other Imperials stationed in Mos Eisley, and, in time, return for a particularly vicious revenge.

"This way," he shouted, grabbing her wrist. He nodded toward a discreet, dark alley branching from the street. "Shortcut to the spaceport."

"I have a _bad _feeling about this, General!"

He pulled her through the thinning throng and into the alley just as sparks from a blaster shot crumpled the wall mere millimeters behind him.

The alley was narrow, quiet and deserted, save for several ancient female humanoids sitting on low benches outside of the shabby doorways. Above them, tattered canopies waved in the sultry breeze and cast uneven shadows on the equally uneven pavement below.

"Oh, no." Lena was pointing two hundred meters ahead, where the alley ended in a swathe of dark shadow. "No way out."

"There's a door at the end that leads outside." At least that was what Kenobi remembered from the last time he had been here, approximately five years ago. Well, there was no time to think about it now – the two Rebels had already turned the corner.

Kenobi and Lena tore past the old women and ran, blaster beams sailing past them and raining above them like fireworks.

When they reached the end, Lena skidded to a stop and drummed her closed fists furiously against the mud-brick wall – sans door – in front of them. Behind, Dodonna was shouting a hoarse warning about inevitability and surrender.

By the Maker, but he had been _certain_ there was a door. Someone must have filled it in during the five years of his absence. But he could still break it down… with the lightsaber clipped into his jacket.

No, A-186 would see the weapon, realize he was not a General. Chaos would ensue – and somehow, he knew for a fact that a woman of her spirit would rather kill herself than hand herself unwillingly to three members of the Rebellion. He turned to her. "Check the doors on the sides. Maybe it's one of those."

He waited until her back faced him, then whipped the lightsaber out and activated the humming blue beam. He plunged it through the mud-brick material, carving out a large, burning circle. Then he kicked the circle to the ground on the other side and tucked the lightsaber into his jacket. "Lena, it's open now. Let's go."

She wheeled back. "How did you—"

"Never mind that. Let's go!"

She clambered through the opening; he followed her.

But something was not quite right. The rapid footsteps of the two pursuing Rebels had ceased to sound in his ears. He peered back into the alley to see the two men staring at each other in confusion. The last fragments of Dodonna's sentence floated to his ears: "… that was a Jedi lightsaber."

"I thought the Jedi died in the war," the younger replied.

"I thought so as well. It doesn't make sense. He looks like an Imperial officer, yet wields a lightsaber like an expert. I suspect he's a renegade Jedi, or he must practice the dark side. Likely both. Hey, you! Stop!"

They had seen him. Kenobi bolted away from the opening in the wall.

Lena was already many meters in front of him; she looked back at him, her black hair flapping wildly in her face. "What in damnation are you doing! Get over here! Don't be a martyr!"

He sprinted up to her just as he noticed the cantina on the other side of the street. "This way." He directed her toward the downtrodden, neon-lighted building. "They'll think we continued ahead."

They ran into the cool, smoke-filled room.

Behind the circular counter in the center of the bar, a corpulent young man was serving an array of variously vile smelling, bubbling, and multicolored drinks to the group of Ithorians, Aqualish, and Ortolans sitting around him on high barstools. A five-Klatoonian band in the corner churned out gritty music that reminded Kenobi of machinery being pieced together upon a conveyor belt, and the cracked neon orbs hanging above flickered weakly to the rhythmic poundings of the drums.

A moment later, Kenobi watched through the tinted window the two Rebels hurrying down the street and out of sight. He let out the breath he didn't realize he had been holding, and slid into the nearest cushioned seat. "They've left."

Lena stood over him with her arms crossed over her chest. Her eyes were unusually dark, serious. "Whatever you did out there, General," she began.

Kenobi winced inwardly and felt the wound on his temple sting in apprehension. He realized that by carving the hole into the wall he had once more slipped his cover, and soon, a bloody fight would once more erupt between the two of them. He readied himself to begin the mind control session the moment she began her furious tirade, or seductive persuasion, or any other strategy she had planned this time to disarm him.

"Whatever you did to break the wall," she was saying, "I want you to know that I'm highly—"

"I'll explain later aboard the ship," he interrupted curtly.

She frowned. "What do you mean? I was going to say that I'm highly _grateful_, General, for what you've done. You saved my life. Again. I …" She cleared her throat. "Thank you."

Oh.

He blinked at her, watching her shift her weight to her good leg and fidget uncomfortably, and detected her embarrassment clearly through the Force. Evidently, both in the courts of Naboo and in the units of the Imperial army, she had not been accustomed to expressing gratitude. He held her gaze and smiled, somewhat sadly. "You're welcome, Lena."

She pivoted away from him, and was silent for a while as the horrendous music throbbed from the Klatoonian band. Then, "Hey, General. Since we'll have to stay here for a while longer just to be safe, I might as well get that juri juice I've been wanting." She walked up to the bar, and a moment later, sauntered back with not one, but two glasses of the translucent beverage. She slid into the seat opposite Kenobi after slipping off her armor and setting the pile at her feet.

Then she placed a glass firmly in front of him. "I'm treating you to the best in the galaxy, General. All attempts to talk yourself out of this one will be futile," she said, her lips widening into that peculiar, smirk-like grin.

Kenobi eyed the mixture skeptically, sniffed it, smelled no trace of poison – aside from the copious amounts of the distinct juri juice alcohol, of course. "This stuff gives a horrible kick," he warned.

"Only the best part. But the brilliant thing about juri juice is that effect will wear off in a few minutes. Then we'll be on our way. Drink up." Her grin widened as she raised her glass. "Come on, I'll race you."

He hesitantly mirrored her movement. Of course, the Jedi code stated no restrictions against alcohol, and even Master Yoda had been known to sip berry wine occasionally…

"On the count of three," Lena was saying. "One. Two…"

They drank on three.

The sweet liquid, though chilled, still managed to burn down Kenobi's throat; a moment later his head was spinning, and he forced himself to swallow the last few gulps, slamming the empty glass onto the table, squeezing his eyes shut against the kaleidoscopic colors that were swirling into his vision. Through the noise of the band and the roaring of blood in his ears, he heard Lena rasp, "You lost, General."

Then, oddly, he thought he heard the smattering of applause throughout the bar, and the stereo double-voice of an Ithorian proclaiming, "The human woman wins the match! Fifty credits!"

Credits? He squinted at Lena blearily, saw that she was intoxicatedly giggling at him. "What credits, Lena?"

"The extra strength juri juice – oh, your face is so red – the Aqualish over there – he thought I couldn't drink it – I bet him I'd race you and win – they owe me fifty credits now!" She reached across the table and, fumbling, took his hands in hers. "Sorry," she managed through her giggles.

"Extra strength? I can't believe it!"

"You're enjoying the kick – don't lie."

"You're the one who lied!"

But she was right. He leaned back in the seat and let the warm, dazzling alcohol course through his system. "In the name of the Force, Lena…"

"The what?"

"The – oh, never mind." He imagined the reaction of the Jedi Council if they saw him now, sharing near-lethal drinks with a first-class Imperial Stormtrooper – he imagined Ki Adi Mundi fainting backwards over his chair and Yoda's eyes popping out of his oversized green head. And suddenly everything just seemed so unbearably silly, the whole war that had passed and the whole Imperial militia and the Jedi Order and the Empire and the Rebellion. And the millions of lives that had been snuffed throughout the galaxy? All for nothing. For a joke. "Listen, Lena," he heard himself slur out, "Why don't we simply take Palpatine and Anak—Darth Vader, and put them in a room with Mon Mothma and the rest of the leaders of the Rebellion and leave the war to themselves? It should hardly matter to us."

"What are you talking – it sounds great – I'll help you."

"Then it's settled," he affirmed, and laughed. The alcohol was positively reeling through him. "Oh, Lena, this is too much."

She swayed to her feet, leaned over the table, and planted a clumsy, moist kiss on his shaven cheek. "Trust me, handsome – it's better than sex," she murmured, then hiccupped.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Five minutes later, the woman had gone to retrieve her fifty credits from the cantankerous Aqualish at the bar, and Kenobi had sufficiently recovered from the juri juice to arrange his crumpled uniform and even out his disheveled hair. Now he watched her stroll steadily back to him, easily shoving aside an inebriated blue humanoid who attempted to enfold her in his arms. The humanoid backpedaled into a stack of barstools amid the sound of derisive laughs, as Lena sat back into her seat opposite Kenobi.

"Everything's set. I have the credits, and I've drunk the juri juice. How do _you_ feel, General? Care for another glass?"

He regarded her, regarded the traces of alcohol still glowing in her cheeks. She was information for the Rebel movement, he firmly told himself. Only information. Another glass of the intoxicant could potentially fry the crucial bits of knowledge in her brain.

He shook his head a little ruefully, and eased himself to his feet. "I feel that we should go, Lena," he said, and cringed as the Klatoonian singer howled out a particularly profane string of lyrics amid the noise of the band. "If not to board the ship, then to escape this infernal racket."

- - - - - - - - - - - -

The Imperial personal transport ship gleamed silver and red in the midday suns, like a jewel amid the dusty, broken junk ships and cargo planes that cluttered the vast, circular arena of the spaceport. It was an older, much smaller model from several years ago, she observed as she walked with the general down the wide staircase that led to the landing strip. Interesting that it seemed in such pristine condition; perhaps it was an auxiliary vessel that had been recently discovered from the warehouses and put to use. With the rapid expansion of the Empire's borders surpassing the expansion of its income, sectors were beginning to skimp on certain costs in an effort to keep the money flowing toward maintaining its active troops.

But, despite its size, it was still a very impressive ship, capable of maneuvering agilely and making robust jumps to lightspeed. "You've called up a good one," she remarked to the general behind her.

They reached the bottom landing of the staircase and began walking to the ship; Felth fell into stride beside her, waving at the pilot inside. "It surprises even me," he responded. "In any case, I'll be glad to enter the climate controlled interior."

She grinned at this and allowed herself to glance at him sideways from the corner of her vision. Covered in the shaggy hair and beard, he had seemed closer to fifty standard years old, but now she could see that he was on the early side of forty. If that. Take three steps back, and she would no longer be able to notice the subtle lines at the corners of his eyes that creased only when he smiled. Not that any of this was important to her duty as a Stormtrooper, of course. Merely the habit of detailed observation that the Academy had pounded into her.

They had reached the personal transport. The door at the side lowered open to form a miniature ramp, and she stepped aboard, with Felth following behind her and securing the door closed with a press of a button.

The interior of the transport was different than she remembered from her previous trips in this model. This one was more spacious, for one thing, and hummed pleasantly, as opposed to gratingly, with the sound of the climate control system. No loose wires hung overhead like spiderwebs, and few consoles and lights jammed the narrow enclosure.

Why would the sector possibly choose to spend its budget on modifying older models of ships rather than buying new fleets? She considered asking Felth, but due to his prolonged stay in the desert he probably wouldn't have known either.

She followed him as he made his way down a short corridor to the cabin. Settled into the pilot's seat was young, mustached man, who turned to them and held out his hand. "Pieter Corlis, license number 2090, at your service. Long live the Emperor."

"Long live the Emperor," she repeated his greeting, and firmly shook his hand. "A-186 is pleased to meet you, 2090. And this is my acquaintance, General Peregrin Felth, license num—" She gestured beside her, but found that the man had already left them and was settling into a seat at the other end of the control room.

_He didn't exchange the formalities. He had breached protocol._ That was her first thought. Her second thought was more of a wordless, vague welling of panic. The only people who dared to break protocol were the insanely suicidal and the people who didn't know of it. More often than not… traitors. Rebels.

She was still for a moment, staring at him, her heart lurching to her throat, when he looked up sharply. What was that she saw in his eyes before he covered it up with a flushed, apologetic smile? Fear?

"Long live the Emperor. I'm so sorry, Pieter Corlis," he was saying as he clambered up from his seat and stuck out his hand. "Living in the desert must have erased the civilized habits in me. I'm General Peregrin Felth, license number—" He bit his lower lip. "License number AA-014. I'm pleased to meet you, 2090. Once again, it wasn't my intention to offend you, nor the illustrious Empire."

She half expected Corliss to pull out a blaster from under his seat and shoot him on the spot – Maker knows, she probably would have – but the pilot only returned the handshake gravely. "I understand how anxious you must feel for returning to the militia for the first time in five years, General Felth. Please take your seat." He released Felth's hand and turned to her. "Please take a seat, A-186."

Why wasn't Corlis angry? Incensed? And more importantly, how did _he,_ a general, manage to forget protocol?

_Why_ did he forget?

She stumbled into the seat between Corlis and Felth, blindly buckled herself in as she couldn't help but gape at the older man. Ask him why. No – demand furiously why he had broken protocol. Go up to him, grab the front of his shirt, and shout at him, "Why are you frightening me?" Do it.

She couldn't. He was leaning into her confidentially, and she couldn't move as he whispered into her ear, his breath tickling her skin, "It was the juri juice." He straightened back in his seat.

"The juri juice?" she mouthed incredulously.

He nodded. "I drank it only once before."

"Oh."

She was frowning at this, yet somehow it made sense if she pondered over his words enough. She felt a slight, warm humming in her mind, and her panic faded as a nebulous suspicion wormed its way into her consciousness that he was doing _that _thing again – doing whatever it was that made her afloat and unguarded and completely vulnerable. But on the other hand, she reasoned, what he had said about the juri juice… come to think of it, perhaps she was still lightly intoxicated as well…

"All settled? This vessel's ready for takeoff."

She snapped out of her daze. Shook her head to clear the fog and frowned again in puzzlement. "I – yes. Yes, 2090, I'm ready."

As the transport lifted from the landing strip, sending up waves of dust from the rippling propulsion exhaust fumes, she still couldn't quite understand the hectic chain of events that had just happened. She gave up and focused her sights on the desert planet instead, watching the ships and buildings and spaceport and life forms below them shrink until they blended into the yellow landscape, and then disappear completely as the ship sailed through the stratosphere and into space.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Obi-Wan Kenobi realized he was gripping the cushioned handles of the passenger seat with much more force than he needed to, and he loosened his fingers, examining the half-moon dents on the faux leather covering gradually rise and disappear.

His grand entrance into the transport ship had been a disaster, and perhaps it would have cost both his and Nadine's lives if he hadn't managed to persuade Lena – through the minor influence of mind control – to believe the lie that he had frantically pulled from the air.

Breathing deeply, he turned his attention to the matters at present. It wouldn't do him any good lingering on that moment of shock when he had sensed Lena's panic over his unacceptable breach of protocol. The Jedi way advised one to remember the past and learn from one's mistakes, but to always stay in the present. To always _calmly_ stay in the present.

He permitted himself one last reminisce of the unbearable heat of Tattooine, and of the little boy Luke, now hundreds of thousands of kilometers below him for the first time in half a decade, and of the narrowly avoided catastrophe he had created because of his unacceptable slip in perceptive concentration, then willed all the lingering traces of adrenalin out of his system. "I suggest you make the jump to hyperspeed as soon as possible, 2090," he announced to the pilot.

Nadine punched several buttons on the control panel, his brow furrowing at the images blinking on the radar screen before him. "I respectfully decline, General. There seems to be several starships stalling within the Tattooinian sector. Regulations state that I'm not allowed to make the jump until we've cruised safely out of the planetary sector."

Lena bent toward the viewscreen, scrutinizing the figures upon it. "The ships look abnormally large. What do you think they are? Military bases for the Rebellion?"

"I highly doubt it," Nadine replied. "Bases that size in open space would have been detected by the Outer Rim patrols in hours. They're most likely trade freighters. Nothing to be worried about."

"And what about that?"

"What are you pointing to?"

"The small red dot that just appeared in the corner – it's fast heading our direction. I think it's…"

A fighter ship.

The Force delivered the answer to Kenobi in a violent jolt to his brain; a split second later, the ship itself jolted as something smashed explosively into the stern. The light orbs above them spasmed, fiery sparks showering down from the shaking machinery overhead.

"Confound it! Someone just shot at us!" Nadine wrenched the steering stick to starboard just as another projectile skimmed by the side of the ship and slammed into the edge of the wing. The ship lurched violently, tiny pieces of silver and red debris hurtling out into the blackness of space.

"It's an X-wing," Lena unsteadily announced a moment later from the flickering viewscreen. "Short distance fighters. Couldn't have come from too far. Must be those Rebels we met earlier at Mos Eis—" Another explosion, and the viewscreen squealed, flashed white, and faded to gray static. She smashed her open palm furiously down on the malfunctioning panel. "Damn it! Damn them!"

Kenobi had unclipped himself from the seat and was now reaching for the communicator in front of him. The device was searing hot in his hand, almost as hot as the lavas of Mustafar, but a green light on its side indicated that it still operated normally. "Did our sector not notify all nearby patrols of our presence?" he demanded pointedly to Nadine before dialing up the frequency of the X-wing.

The pilot looked bewildered, lost. "Yes, General Ken – General Felth, we notified every single patrol system, but…" – another hit, another shower of sparks – "…but some members must not have received the message! Should we simply tell her that – you know?"

Kenobi understood. "No, Corlis. Just steer. Make sure we're not blown to oblivion," he answered as the communicator established contact with the X-wing in a buzz of static. "Stop your fire! I repeat, stop your fire! Our ship's captain is Pieter Corlis. Repeat, our ship's captain is Pieter Corlis – contact your nearest base leader and he will tell you to immediately cease fire!"

Lena had pushed her way up to him; was pulling at his arm. He could almost smell her confusion and fear and anger through the singed scent of burning metal, a good deal of which was directed toward him. "What good will this do, Felth!" she screamed into his ear. "Now is not the time for diplomacy!"

"Stop it, Lena!" He pushed her aside with more force than he had intended, sending her tripping over a wayward wire and sprawling into the control panel. He felt a twinge of regret at the impatient, uncontrolled action, but the feeling was immediately covered up by the situation at hand.

What _could _he do? Frustration overwhelmed him. He could declare outright the allegiance of this vessel to the Rebellion and risk Lena's fury during the flight to the Alderaanian base. Or he could continue with this now deadly charade – attempt to convince the Rebel X-wing to stop their shooting long enough for Nadine to bring the transport into hyperspeed. And once on Alderaan, he could file a serious complaint against the inefficiency of the Rebellion's mass communication system—

Pain exploded over his cheek, seared into his bruised temple.

She had slapped him, he realized, aghast. She had sprung up from the control panel and had slapped him. "What in the name of the Maker are you doing, Lena!"

She reached for the communicator in his hands and wrenched it away. "No – what are _you_ doing?" Grunting, she snapped the communicator away from its cord and smashed it onto the floor, where it broke like glass into a thousand spare parts. "Do you _enjoy _delivering us to the Rebel scum?"

"I'm your superior, A-186," he pointed out, barely keeping his anger within the Jedi-allowed boundaries. "I make decisions and I expect you to follow them, not destroy the only hope of communication we have with the—"

She shook her head. "You're my superior? No, not now… _General_ Felth. As far as they're concerned, the Empire considers you dead without me. Remember?" She shot him a glare that could incinerate kessel, then directed her attention to the controls. "Corlis – I suggest you take us into hyperspeed as soon as you possibly can."

"The hyperdrive is almost ready. Thirty more seconds, maxim—"

Another shot – closer this time – vibrated through the cabin, sending down more sparks, and somewhere toward the stern an alarm began wailing loudly, red emergency lights spiraling like windswept flames.

The pilot cursed. "The air hatch has been breached. Pressure and oxygen levels falling steadily. The breach is – damnation! Over there." He pointed to the upper corner of the cockpit where a hole the size of a fist had formed between the junction of the vessel body and the transparent duraglass pane. A high hissing noise issued forth, and crumbs of metal and glass sprayed out of the cabin like mist. "General, pull the blue lever at your side to release the reserve duraglass."  
Kenobi found the lever, yanked it firmly down. Somewhere within the belly of the ship came a clunking sound, but after five seconds no spare duraglass slid over the broken pane.

Nadine cursed again. "The mechanism's disconnected too. We'll have to manually fix the lever wiring from the inside—"

"Bring us into hyperspeed," Lena interrupted.

"I can't," he responded. "The pressure will destroy the entire vessel. And besides, it'll take two hours to reach the base, but at this rate, all pressure and oxygen will be lost from this ship in ten minutes."

The ship lurched hard to port from another shot that had hit home; the lights on the control panel flashed epileptically for a brief second and went dim. The pilot turned to Kenobi, and the Jedi master could sense the real fear churning in the younger man's gut. The fear of death. The same repressed, sickening sensation he had felt emanating from Darth Vader as he had crawled burning from the banks of the Mustafarian river…

"General," Nadine was saying, his voice raw, "we'll have to tell them. Fly in the emergency signal formation. Admit that this plan is not exactly working the way we had intended it to, and tell them that we're Re—"

"No, Corlis," Kenobi said before he could go on any further. By the Force, the young man was right. Just tell them that they were Rebels and let Lena escape or kill herself for her own cause or do whatever it was she needed to do. There would always be another chance, another potential informer. Forget about A-186. Come out alive. Go back to Tattooine.

But somehow he couldn't. It didn't make sense – the vacuum of space was fast sucking at the ship and the X-wing behind them was gaining and shooting at their own men – yet he simply couldn't.

"Corlis, go and fix the duraglass lever. I'll fly in the meantime."

"It'll take me at least twenty minutes by myself. I'll need help. And you absolutely can't stay in the cockpit during the last few minutes or you'll suffocate—"

"No." It was Lena who spoke this time; he and the pilot both turned to her simultaneously. "Both of you fix the lever," she said, edging Nadine bodily out of the captain's seat and buckling herself in. "_I'll_ fly." She maneuvered the steering stick in a nauseating ninety-degree tilt followed by a nosedive, and a moment later a volley of orange laser beams sailed harmlessly over them and disappeared in the distance.

Impressive, Kenobi couldn't help himself from noticing. Perhaps a skilled, borderline genius pilot like Anakin would have been able to avoid close-range shots like those – but Maker knows, _he_ definitely wouldn't have. Nevertheless, as the pilot ducked out of the cockpit, he remained where he stood and said to the woman, "If you stay here, Lena, you'll suffocate before we're done."

"And if _you _stay here, all three of us will be blown to bits within twenty seconds!" she retorted snappily. "Better me than all three – I'm the better flier and you know it. Go help Corlis."

In the ensuing heartbeat of a moment, Kenobi surveyed the hissing, widening breach in the glass, the misty pieces tumbling out of the cockpit like glittering jewels. He unwrapped the red sash from his waist, balled it up, and stuffed it into the breach. The hissing subsided considerably, but mere silk would not be able to completely halt the vacuum. Only slow it down. "Lena—" he began. Caught himself. "Don't die, Lena," he finished, puzzled as to what exactly he meant by those words.

"Help Corlis," she repeated dispassionately. She did not divert her attention away from the controls.

He calmed himself with a trembling breath and turned away from the cabin and rushed down the corridor.

"If I die, Felth – whoever you are – it'll be because of you," he thought she called after him – or was that just the noise of the rattling machinery and wind?

He reached the open hatch in the wall at the end of the corridor. Nadine had crawled into the tiny, wire-filled space behind the hatch, and was flipping through the rows and rows of hundreds of wires above his head. An open, brimming toolbox was at his feet.

"There are three electrical wires that control the emergency lever," he proclaimed when Kenobi knelt beside him. "All have been short circuited. We'll have to replace them for the lever to function." He reached down into the toolbox and pulled out two voltage testers and handed one to him. "I don't know which three they are – the wires all look identical. We'll have to individually test and check for the red-lighted ones. I'll take the left half. You take the right."

"In the name of the Force, it's a _forest_ of wires." Kenobi touched the nearest wire with the tip of the voltage tester. The tester flashed green. He moved to the next one. Green. The next. Green.

Very soon, they were both moving swiftly down the lines, but Kenobi could sense through the Force the life presence in the cabin wavering just slightly. A little out-of-breath wooziness, like one would feel after jogging a lap around the Jedi lightsaber practice arena…

"General Obi-Wan Kenobi?" Nadine softly broke the silence. "In all respect, sir, there are other ways to find the location of the Imperial planet. For now, we can fly the ship in the distress formation – we don't have to continue with this. In the future, we can deploy spies, informants, wiretaps—"

"No, Crix, we're so close," he whispered, a small flood of impatient annoyance filling him. He pushed it away. _A Jedi shall not know anger. _He continued testing the wires. Green. Green. Green. "Crix – listen. It's impossible for even the Empire's own to discover confidential information outside of his ranks. Is it not true that you were a commander in the militia and even you don't know the location of the Imperial planet?"

"Yes, it's true. Before I deflected, my license was B-004. I wasn't an A or an AA, so I couldn't know." Then, resolutely, he said, "It's also true, sir, that first-class Stormtroopers were handpicked for their undying loyalty to the Emperor. Even if we do succeed, she wouldn't easily give up the information of the Imperial planet unless some very drastic actions were undertaken by the Rebellion to get it out of her."

"What do you mean by that?"

Nadine let out a sardonic little laugh. "One thing I've learned from serving on both sides of the war, sir, is that most politicians are the same all across the galaxy, Imperial, Rebellion, or otherwise. Their ideals may be different and their goals may be different, but one thing remains. To them, the idea of 'aggressive negotiation' with the enemy is always a plausible option. Here – quick. I found one. Hand me the wire from the toolbox."

Kenobi retrieved the wire along with a miniature solder gun; Nadine ripped out the defective wire and soldered the new one in its place as Kenobi returned to testing his side of the ceiling.

"I believe in democracy and in the firm moral standing of the Rebellion," he said to the younger man. Green. Green.

"Is then the Rebellion movement the official stance of the—" Nadine's words were cut off as the ship spiraled violently and the sound of a laser beam scraping over the top of the transport reached their ears. However, no sparks fell from the ceiling, no lights flickered. Only the Force shivered and gasped.

Like two laps around the Jedi courtyard, Kenobi thought. He sensed that five minutes had passed. Green. Green. Green.

"Is the Rebellion movement the official stance of the Jedi Knights?" Nadine was asking.

"No, we Jedi are not officially affiliated with any political organization. My belief in the Rebellion is separate from my adherence the Jedi code. Why did you risk your life and career to deflect from the Empire?"

"Because the Empire promises nothing that I hold to be of value. No democracy, only stifling tyranny, dictatorship and subjugation."

The Force pulled at Kenobi like a vacuum. He took a deep breath to satisfy the sudden hunger in his lungs; forced himself not to think about her. Lena, A-186. He ignored the growing pain that seeped through the Force. "What did you mean when you said that aggressive negotiation with the enemy meant the same for every politician?"

"Well, doesn't it, sir? The Empire and Rebellion have their respective goals. For the Empire, it's dictatorship, for the Rebellion, democracy. Drastic action needs to be taken in order for one to rise above the other."

"But for us, this drastic action does not include tyranny." He held his ground as the ship careened in another impossible loop. "It doesn't include torture. We follow the galactic Just War Convention and the Codes of Moral Law signed over two thousand years ago."

"Of course. Noble Jedi Knights like yourself do – to the letter. But, sir, Bail Organa is not a Jedi. Neither is the rest of the Rebellion. We let ourselves feel anger and hatred and become propelled accordingly when it furthers our cause."

"Why did you join the Rebellion if you feel this way about the movement?"

Nadine smiled a humorless smile that seemed closer to a grimace. "I support democracy, General Kenobi. I didn't say I was a saint. Or a Jedi."

A red light blinked from Kenobi's voltage tester. "I found another one, Crix," he announced, pulling it out.

"Good. Here's the new wire." The younger man held out the replacement; Kenobi soldered it into place. One more, he thought. Just the last one remained. Eight minutes had passed, and there were two more minutes to go – perhaps more, if the sash was holding in the breach.

And it was then that the ship veered. But not to avoid a laser beam. Through the Force, Kenobi felt an actual, physical pain sear into him, into his muffled lungs and pounding heart. He clutched at his chest, cried out.

"General?" Nadine's hand was underneath his elbow, steadying him.

"The air," he gasped, pinwheels twirling behind closed eyelids. "The air…"

"Here?"

He willed the connection in the Force to break, then opened his eyes and cleared his throat. "No, in the cabin. Lena's suffocating – quickly, Crix, we don't have much time."

"You know you'll have to stay here if you want at least two survivors aboard this ship," the younger man gasped, tapping the wires above him with the voltage tester.

Kenobi returned to his task. Green. Green. Green. "I know." Green. The impatience coursing through him was overwhelming, mixing with the increasingly empty sensation in his lungs and the light, weightless feeling in his head.

Impatience. That was the first disapproving thing that Qui-Gon Jinn had chided him about, he remembered. Years – no, decades ago. Back when the Jedi temple still flourished in the bustling city of Coruscant. Whether he had been practicing attack moves with the lightsaber or rehearsing the subtle skills of levitation, the gruff voice would always repeat the same criticism over and over. _Don't be impatient, Kenobi. Wait. Wait, and it will come._

Green. Green.

On Tattooine, time had been measured by the slow, burning trails of the suns as they trailed parallel arcs over the baking desert dunes. Patience had come naturally then. Now – now, the fate of that woman depended upon two minutes. A hundred and twenty heartbeats.

Lose her and lose… everything, he thought. The Rebellion would return to fighting shadows in the nebula that was the Empire, and he would return to watching the boy Luke grow up under the twin suns of Tattooine.

Green.

But was Luke Skywalker the prophecy anyway? The Force was astonishingly strong with him, yes, but no one had ever said he was the prophecy – no voice had ever come to Kenobi in the middle of the sweat-drenched night to whisper those words into his mind and soothe him with their security. No, because _Anakin_ Skywalker was the prophecy. And Anakin was dead.

Green. Green.

Lose her, he thought, and he would return to protecting a lie…

Green. Green. Green.

His vision swam.

Red.

"Crix! I have it!" He shook his head clear of the suffering hallucinations and tore the malfunctioning wire from the ceiling. Nadine plugged in the replacement wire a split second later, and soldered it down unsteadily.

From the cabin came a loud sucking sound followed by the firm clank of duraglass meeting metal. The sharp hissing faded, and a steady, soft stream of cool oxygen poured out from the vents.

The young man Nadine was panting, inhaling great gulps of air and clutching at his chest. "It worked. I thought – for a moment I thought we weren't going to make it, General. We – General?"

"Follow me and fly the ship, Crix," Kenobi called behind him, bolting down the hallway to the cabin. "Bring it to hyperspeed. We haven't a moment to lose."

The small figure of the woman was crumpled over the darkened controls, one hand resting upon the steering stick and the other dangling limply at her side. He sensed that she was still alive. Alive, but not breathing. He unfastened her from the pilot's seat, carried her to an empty spot on the floor and laid her flat.

Her face was noticeably blue, even in the dim light – her lips, bluer. He took an icy, limp hand in his and held it tight. Then he leaned down and parted her cold, blue lips and placed his mouth over them and breathed for her.

In the name of the Force, don't die.

After the third breath, she coughed weakly into his mouth. He straightened, peered into her face, and found that she was observing him blearily through barely open eyes. "Is the lever fixed?" she murmured.

He nodded.

"Is Corlis all right?"

"Yes, he's fine. He's flying."

"Good. And are you all right?"

"I'm…" He looked up to the ceiling and blinked several times before he could meet her golden gaze again. "I'm – listen, Lena, don't lose consciousness again – yes, keep your eyes open and breathe deeply."

"I'm not going to die, you piece of Bantha fodder," she returned, a ghost of her haughty smirk fluttering across her features. "You're so worried. I'm touched. I'm glad you realize that I saved your skin, you know. Now we're even. Maybe you can take me for a drink when we reach the base, General."

He couldn't speak.

"I'll take that as a yes," she said when he didn't reply. "Just don't do any more stupid things and wake me when we're there." Her eyelids closed, and soon, the steady rise and fall of her chest signified that she had fallen asleep.

"General?" Nadine was calling from the captain's seat. "We're going into hyperspeed in ten seconds. Brace yourself. How's the Stormtrooper? Is she alive?"

"Yes, Crix. Unconscious."

"Good. It makes the little vixen much easier for us to handle on the trip …" Then the young man frowned at him.

"What, Crix?"

They stared at each other; the younger focused back on the controls, and Kenobi felt his flustered embarrassment through the Force. "I – never mind, General. Sir. I apologize for the comment, sir. It was out of line."

"I'll let it go," he said, quietly.

The ship lurched into hyperdrive, and Kenobi watched the stars fade from behind two panes of duraglass.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

To be continued. The music at the cantina was "Closer," by Nine Inch Nails. Personally, I like it, but I guess Obi-Wan doesn't. Thanks for reviewing, everyone. Keep those reviews coming! Thanks.


	4. Negotiations

THE QUARRY

By: Scatterheart a.k.a. Hallospacegirl

- - - - - - - - - - - -

CHAPTER FOUR: NEGOTIATIONS

She was still asleep two hours later as the ship soared into the pearly, sea-foam Alderaanian atmosphere and settled onto the landing strip of the small spaceport of the Rebel Alliance.

A forest, Obi-Wan observed. The spaceport and indeed the whole secret Rebel base had been cleverly built into a forest of cool, watercolored trees. Above shone one late-afternoon sun in the soft blue sky, and in the distance, the tips of a rolling, lush mountain range peeked out over the expanse of flora.

How long had it been since he'd last seen a forest? Or heard birds sing? Or sat by a brook and meditated while the water burbled over the stones?

The door of the transport ship lowered open with a muffled thud against the compacted soil runway, and sweet, fresh air swirled into the cabin. The woman stirred in the center seat, moaning slightly.

Don't wake up now, he thought. He couldn't keep his eyes off of her, even when the five Rebel soldiers – three humans, a Twi'lek and a young Mon Calamari – filed into the ship with blasters drawn. The sun was glinting off of her hair and setting it afire. Don't wake up.

"General Obi-Wan Kenobi?" The first Rebel queried. He was an older, dark-skinned man with short, white curly hair. "I'm Captain Feyd Caruthers. And I speak on behalf of everyone on Alderaan when I say that it's an honor to finally receive you on our humble planet." He held out a hand; Kenobi rose from his seat and shook it. Then Caruthers gestured with his blaster to the sleeping figure. "Is this the Imperial Stormtrooper, General?"

"Yes, Captain. She's injured."

"Will we be needing a stretcher to transport her to the base?"

"I don't – yes. Bring one."

The captain snapped his fingers at the Mon Calamari. "Capkary, send for the medics and for a stretcher."

"Right away, sir." She nodded and stepped from the transport.

Kenobi glanced outside; fifty Rebel soldiers and several officials were already gathered in a semicircle around the ship, he estimated, and the assembly was steadily growing. They weren't going to take any chances with this one. "Tight controls," he remarked to Caruthers.

"Ah, yes. At the express orders of your old friend Senator Organa. He's eagerly awaiting your arrival outside. You're free to see him now and leave the Imperial to us. You've already done more for the Rebellion than we could possibly ask of you, General Kenobi, and we're more than happy to take it over from here." He smiled, warmly. "Enjoy the scenery of Alderaan, General. Stretch your legs. Bask in the summer sun. We heard it's slightly more bearable than that of Tattooine."

"Just barely," he said, and forced himself to return the smile. He looked to the young pilot, Crix Nadine. "Will you be coming with me?"

"No, sir. I'll be continuing to help with the Imperial operation until she is safely secured. It was an honor flying with you, sir."

Kenobi nodded, once. The woman, Lena, A-186. Now, an Imperial operation. He didn't look at her when he abruptly turned on his heel and left the ship.

Outside, the ground held firmly yet softly under his feet; unlike sand, it didn't crunch, sink under his weight and pull him down. Above him, veiled behind some white clouds, one sun shone benevolently, and a light, cool wind blew across his skin. He inhaled until the air filled his every pore.

_A Jedi lives in the present, never the past._

And Lena. Lena was the past now, he reminded himself. Now let her go, and release her memory into the wind…

A tall, olive-skinned man with a dark mustache and deep blue robes was parting the crowd and jogging up to him with both arms outstretched.

Bail Organa.

"Obi-Wan! You sly Jedi, you! You did it!" he was shouting as he ran.

Kenobi closed the distance between them and wrapped the senator in a firm embrace. "It's been too long, Bail, my old friend."

"I'll say." He broke from the embrace, held the Jedi at arm's length, and searched into his face. "By the Maker, Obi-Wan, without that beard you look just like that first time I met you. How old were you then? Twenty-five? Thirty? Tell me your secrets."

He laughed, but the sound came out too soft, too heavy. "Tattooine, Bail. Tattooine."

"And how the deuce did that happen to your temple?"

"Clumsiness," he replied.

The senator shook his head slowly, whistling low. "By the Maker, five whole years there with no one around. I can't imagine how you did it, Obi-Wan."

"Patience, perhaps?"

"It's only your mantra, after all." He stepped to Kenobi's side and gestured for him to follow; a narrow path leading to a shiny silver building complex had been cleared from the crowd. "Come see the new Rebel headquarters. Just completed two months ago. It's the pride and joy of the Rebellion."

Fifty pairs of eyes were observing them, Kenobi realized as he trailed after Organa. While just a day ago he had slipped through the milieu of life forms in Mos Eisley like a forgotten ghost, now he was unable to take a step without someone seeing, someone noticing. Someone remembering.

Just like old times, he repeated to himself. He had been a general once – no, not a feigned identity taken from someone already lost to the Ultimate Maker – he had been a bona fide general, commanding an actual army unit, and he had thrived under the watchful expectancy of hundreds and thousands of life forms…

He found that his head was aching dully from the concentration of attention in the Force. He picked up his pace and fell into stride beside the senator. Searched for something to say. "How's your wife? How's Leia Skywalker?"

The smile on the senator's mouth wavered slightly. "Oh, the ladies are excellent, Obi-Wan. Just excellent. Leia _Organa, _my daughter,has just read her first picture holo-book this morning, in fact. Not bad for a five-year-old, don't you think?"

"No, not at all. Congratulations, Bail." Inwardly, he winced. Leia Organa. Of course. He would have to keep in mind that the name of Skywalker was now but a remnant of the old Republic, having been dismembered and re-titled and split across three corners of the galaxy. He couldn't make the same mistake again – he had felt Bail's acute discomfort through the Force.

"I take it you'd want to visit them in the near future, Obi-Wan?"

"Yes, Bail. Soon."

"Wonderful, when you're fully rested I'll arrange for you to…" The senator trailed off in a frustrated sigh. "Obi-Wan." He stopped abruptly in his tracks and turned to him, placing a light hand on his upper arm. "I'm not a Jedi, but I'm also not an idiot. Something's wrong."

What was wrong was that they had stopped in the middle of the throng of soldiers, in midst of the fifty pairs of staring, memorizing eyes. "What do you mean?" he asked as cordially as he could.

"Don't try to fake it with me, Kenobi," Organa replied gently. "You're preoccupied. You look… miles away. You're not happy to see me. Why, my friend? The operation succeeded admirably, just like you planned."

Yes, Kenobi told himself. The operation was a success. He focused his mind on the senator again, tried to rein it from its wanderings into the forbidden territory behind him. "Bail, you are my dear friend and nothing could change that," he said at last. "I'm simply tired, and I apologize for my listlessness."

"Ah, I see." The senator nodded, but Kenobi could sense that he hadn't been completely convinced. "Well, come inside the headquarters and have some dinner with me. Then do as you please – nothing is off limits for you at this base. When you decide to call it a night, we've arranged for you the presidential suite overlooking the lagoon."

"It's more than I could ask for. Thank y—"

"Obi-Wan Kenobi!"

They both wheeled around to the shout behind them; to Kenobi, the female voice was all too familiar, yet completely foreign as it yelled out a name he had never heard her use before…

Lena stood at the base of the transport ship, arms bound in energy-cuffs before her. Three soldiers flanked either side of her – four more were gathering behind, holding an empty stretcher. And though he knew that she was physically too far away from him for him to notice, he thought he could discern the sunlight shining golden into her overwhelming, scorching eyes.

The entire gathered assembly was quiet, Bail Organa and the soldiers and the politicians and everyone, as she opened her mouth and enunciated distinctly across the cleared path, "I hate you, Obi-Wan Kenobi."

And then the soldiers were leading her roughly away in the opposite direction of the headquarter building, and she didn't fight, but she was still craning her head back to look at him, still freezing him with that gaze, and she didn't let go until the crowd had swallowed them up in its midst… and yet he could still feel her presence within him, privately echoing the same sentiment she had proclaimed for everyone to know.

_I hate you._

The Force assaulted him with her fury, and he felt his vision reeling, and suddenly everything was coalescing to black, but he was too tired – too deathly exhausted – to reach out and save himself. He let the blackness carry him into the sweet, cool soil.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Bail Organa followed the turn in the hallway and continued down the corridor until he reached the private medical quarters of the Rebel base. He rapped lightly on the door – when he received no reply, he twisted the handle and let himself in.

The dim morning light floated silkily into the large room through the satin shades that were drawn over two bay windows. Upon the dining table a half eaten breakfast of porridge and spice-pie still sent up faint wisps of steam. The bed was ruffled, slept in, and empty.

"Obi-Wan?" he called, scanning the cool, silent quarters.

It took him a moment before he could discern the cross-legged, gowned figure, sitting in the farthest corner of the room and half enveloped in its smoky shadows. Sighing, he strode over to the Jedi master. All members of the Jedi creed were known for being disciplined and difficult, but Obi-Wan Kenobi was legendary for being exceptionally so. He dropped to his knees and peered into the man's slack, expressionless face. "Obi-Wan. It's Bail." The eyes remained closed, the posture unchanging. "Are you awake?"

"I was never asleep," came the soft reply.

"What are you doing?"

"Meditating."

He might as well have said "go away," but Organa wasn't about to give up. "Obi-Wan, you're meditating on the floor. There _is_ a bed in here, you know."

"Then that would be called sleeping, Bail." The blue eyes opened, crinkled in a small, serene smile. "Good morning."

Organa stood slowly and ran a hand over the taut, fatigued planes of his own face. While the Jedi had slept through all of last evening in a trance-like state that had perplexed the officials and health personnel to no end, he had spent the entirety of that time contacting every department at the headquarters, negotiating with leaders about the Imperial hostage, firmly calming the anxieties of all who had questioned about Kenobi's health.

After the collapse at the landing strip, they had rushed the Jedi into the medical bay, where the first readings of the man's vital statistics had nearly sent Organa into shock. Heart rate ten beats per minute. Blood pressure close to zero. And yet the medi-droid had still repeatedly proclaimed him to be perfectly healthy, and had firmly advised against Organa's orders to submerse him in a bacta tank.

"Obi-Wan Kenobi is in a healthy, alternate state of consciousness," it had intoned with programmed cheer, hovering and darting about the prone body like a protective queen bee against the frantic senator, and it was only when his elderly aide Marina Mare suggested that perhaps this was a form of Jedi meditation that Organa had finally relented to the medi-droid's diagnosis.

"I sense that you're not entirely happy with me."

He started as the voice broke him out of his ruminations – Kenobi had hopped lightly to his feet and was standing at the dining table, picking out marble-sized berries from the fruit basket in the center.

Damnation. Even after all these years, the Jedi knights' silent, liquid way of moving still awed and unnerved him. And this Jedi in particular – coupled with his thoroughly ingratiating calm…

Organa allowed his annoyance to flare out in full force. "What was this whole thing yesterday all about?"

"I believe I fainted, my friend," Kenobi answered, placing a berry in his mouth and chewing thoughtfully.

"And after that? Acting effectively like a – like a _corpse_ – for the entire evening? Then miraculously regaining all your vital stats so that the damned medi-droid moved you straight from intensive care to here? Then – meditating on the _floor _like nothing happened? Obi-Wan, if the rest of the base knew half as much as I did about your condition, they would have worried themselves to _death_. To them, you are a hero. A legend. You can't imagine what the pandemonium was like out there after you crumpled to the ground like a rag doll."

The Jedi looked amused. "What makes you believe I took any voluntary part in all of this?"

"Knowing you and your kind, Obi-Wan…"

"All right, Bail. I apologize. Prior to my arrival, I hadn't slept in two nights, and so I decided to give my body a rest—"

"By fainting without warning. Look, if the medi-droid hadn't diagnosed you to be completely healthy, we would have buried you already."

He smiled sheepishly. "I admit the… deep meditation… probably wasn't the best thing to do, given that I didn't bother with a warning beforehand, and I'm sure it caused a lot of needless worry. But I'm perfectly well now, and I can go out there today and have a word with the members of the base if you'd like."

At least he had regained his usual loquacious good spirits. Organa sighed raggedly. "I'd prefer for you to keep to yourself until the shock of yesterday afternoon wears off from the base. In the meantime…" He anxiously searched into Kenobi's face; it appeared healthy, alert, refreshed. He chose not to evade the topic any longer. "In the meantime, Obi-Wan, we – that's you, me, and three closest secretaries of my cabinet council – need to discuss the Imperial hostage situation."

The Jedi's pleasant countenance remained smiling and unchanging, almost like a mask of amicability that soothed the senator, yet at the same time made him vaguely unsettled at the thought of what could reside behind it. "And when would the meeting be?" Kenobi asked.

"As soon as possible – as soon as _you're_ up to it, that is."

"I'm fully rested now," he replied in that same smooth and unhurried tone, finishing the berries in his hand.

"Good. I'll leave you thirty minutes to get ready. Then C-5MO, the medical protocol droid, will come and escort you to the meeting room."

"I'll be ready."

Organa turned to leave; decided against it. He let out another heavy sigh and placed his hand upon Kenobi's shoulder. The muscle beneath the knit fabric felt too tense, too stiff for someone who had proclaimed to be "fully rested." Scrutinizing the Jedi's face, he thought he could discern the darkened circles under the eyes and the trench of a frown between the strong brows. "My friend, I know it's not fair to drag you into this so soon. I would let you rest longer if I could, but…" He leaned in and dropped his voice, a gesture more out of habit from the enemy-laden days of the Republic than anything else. "But things have been… difficult. With the hostage."

"Difficult?" The furrow between the Jedi's brow had deepened. "Explain, Bail. I sense through the Force it's more than just a difficulty. Did she attempt to escape?"

"Not from the reports I've heard. She's being held in a maximum-security cell, and I believe she's intelligent enough to know it's nearly impossible for a human to escape from it. Three negotiators visited her last night for a short, preliminary…" – he searched for the most appropriate word – "…interview, so to speak. Of course, we consistently use the most diplomatic and humane methods to treat our subjects, even during the latter stages of interrogation. And this was only the first phase. A simple, ten minute session."

The Jedi was rubbing his chin with a hand and did not speak – Organa continued following the brief silence. "However, I'm assuming that after she realized that we were trying to extract the details of the Imperial planet from her, she attempted suicide an hour after the interview. Tried to strangle herself with her handcuff cords. Luckily, alarms went off and the guards saved her in time, and now she's being held under suicide watch. Obi-Wan."

He had walked abruptly away from Organa, and was sliding open a closet door. He swiftly flipped through the racks inside and pulled out several items – black trousers, a simple white tunic, a belt – and threw them upon the bed. "We'll meet in ten minutes, Bail," he announced. "Gather together your cabinet and I'll see you at the conference room."

"Are you—"

"Yes, I'm all right. If this is the situation, then we don't have time. I'll need to change. Go now, my friend."

Yet as Organa stepped out the door, the Jedi called to him again, and this time his voice was… odd, somehow, the senator mused, turning around. Hoarse.

"About Lena."

"Yes, Obi-Wan?"

"Is she—"

There. He saw it. During that split moment he had seen the Jedi mask of nonchalant peace drop crashing to the floor, and it was replaced with an expression of utter – and then it was gone. Gone before he could tell what it was.

"Never mind," Obi-Wan Kenobi was saying, hurriedly waving him out. The Jedi façade surrounded his entire being like an impenetrable blast shield. "I will see you in ten minutes."

"But you were going to say someth—"

"It's best if we save it for the meeting," he interrupted. His frown was stern, and left no room for disagreement.

Shaking his head, Organa stepped out of the room and closed the door behind him.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

They were gathered around a circular black marble table in the middle of the sparse and windowless conference room; a holo-projector computer unit took up much of the central space, and was currently buzzing out a faint blue cylinder of static halfway to the ceiling.

The senator Bail Organa stood at the end of the table, holding in his hand a miniature keypad. To his right sat an old human woman and a young male Ithorian – Kenobi recognized the woman to be the presence he had felt last night while he had submersed himself inside the Jedi trance. Marina was her name, he remembered from the snatches of conversation he had overheard. Marina Mare. The Ithorian he didn't know, nor the female Bith beside him.

Kenobi himself sat between the Bith and the senator – he drummed his fingers against the cold tabletop and settled back in his chair to avoid the icy stone surface from touching the skin of his torso. In fact, he was almost shivering, he realized, even though the temperature was apparently warm enough for Mare to don a half-sleeved shirt and not raise the goose bumps on her forearms. Almost inadvertently he thought back to Tattooine. By this time in the morning his hovel would have already been as scorched and stifling as the interior of an oven – the rough linen shades would have been drawn to reduce the amount of sunshine searing inside, and he would have been sunk deep in meditation in the coolest corner of the room.

But as the introductory proceedings went on – the Ithorian and Bith introduced themselves as Chig Nugla and Cam'ria Ban, respectively – Kenobi realized that it was more the prospect of this meeting that chilled him rather than the jolt of being away from the Jundland Wastes. Prior to the war he had always detested diplomatic gatherings; he found that even after an entire five years of exile he had not changed in this respect. The rooms were always too cold, the chairs too hard, the layered conversations too ceremonial. The varying sensations sent in through the Force – the jubilant vibes of triumphant senators mixed with the anger and humiliation of the not so fortunate always collided in the pit of his stomach like ten tracks of discordant music played simultaneously.

And on the occasions he chose to shut himself off from the Force, to save his brain from exploding with the dull ache of sensory onslaught, he found that he would often begin slipping into extended periods of silence, or launching into winded speeches that garnered him the disapproving looks of all across the board.

Maker knows he would have opted out of this meeting if it weren't for the fact that it centered on… well, the Imperial operation. The Stormtrooper. A-186.

He pulled himself out of his own thoughts and focused his attention on Bail Organa. The senator had pressed a series of commands on his miniature keypad and a holo-illustrated image of A-186 had materialized from the blue cylinder of static at the center of the table. Despite the crudeness of the generated image, the classical face was undeniably hers, framed by the tumbling black hair and veiled by the enigmatic smirk playing upon a full, bow-shaped mouth.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we're here to discuss the matter of the Imperial situation," Organa announced, catching the eye of every member in turn. He stopped when he reached Kenobi, fixing his dark brown gaze into the Jedi. "Stormtrooper A-186. Lena, as she calls herself. It's an alias she used to register for the Imperial Academy. Her real name is Larmé Sarena Narona. Larmé Sarena of Naboo."

An uncomfortable shuffle filtered through the Force, a rearranging of feet, a series of suppressed coughs.

Larmé Sarena Narona. Kenobi mentally rolled it over his tongue. A peaceful sound, like lazy water tripping over rocks. Such a quintessentially Nubian noblewoman's name, Larmé Sarena. Too ornate and soft for the Imperial Academy, of course – small wonder that she had shortened it to Lena upon registration…

"Yes, Obi-Wan?"

He realized he was still emptily staring at Organa; he shook his head in apology and glanced down at his hands. "Go on, senator."

Larmé Sarena… could it really be her? A-186? The one and the same?

"Our research shows that Larmé Sarena was born in the capital city of Theed," Organa was saying. "The exact date of her birth is not known, but we can approximate her to be three or four years younger than former Nubian queen, Padmé Amidala. As many of you may know, Queen Amidala, later Senator Amidala, lost her life at the end of the war, and her unborn child as well." He cleared his throat.

Kenobi couldn't help the bitter smile from tingeing his lips. So the Skywalker children continued to remain unknown to even the top leaders of the Rebellion. How hidden they were, hidden from the very organization that pledged to keep them safe.

"Records from Amidala's childhood show that the queen-in-training invited to her tenth birthday gala a younger playmate whom she called Larmie," the senator continued. "This we can guess was Larmé Sarena, especially since her parents, Thurkin and Shané Narona, are the fourteenth Duke and Duchess of the Northern sector of Naboo. Larmé Sarena is their only child. Now, take a look at this." He pressed another button on the keypad, and the illustrated image of Lena – Larmé Sarena – gave way to a rotating, three-dimensional scan of two leaves of paper. Kenobi squinted, made out the flickering blue headlines upon the sheets.

Old Republic military agreement contracts. For Thurkin and Shané.

"These papers – this means that the Duke and Duchess were working for the Republic during the war," Marina Mare whispered. Her powdery pale face was drawn into a web-laden frown, the corners of her lips downturned. "But Naboo's official stance during the war was neutral. It was a pacifist planet. No one was allowed to leave the planet in order to fight."

"For either side," the Bith Cam'ria Ban added, nasally. "Republic or Separatist."

Organa nodded again. "It was the perfect opportunity for the Naronas to set up an underground organization to recruit Republic sympathizers from Naboo. They recruited young men and women under the pretence that these volunteers were building a Human/Gungan diversity center on the banks of their largest swamp. These individuals then paid them a fee of three thousand credits to board Republic vessels designed as cargo ships. The ships would carry them to the nearest Academy where they would train. As many as fifty thousand Nubians took part in the flight out." He hesitated to catch his breath, then resumed, on an audibly more somber note, "We all know too well that when the war ended, the Republic dissolved into the Empire."

"And the Naronas' recruitment center?" Ban asked.

"Unfortunately, that remained, and it now pledged allegiance to the Empire. People love to side with the majority and with the security it offers, I suppose," Organa remarked, lifting his shoulders in a small, wry shrug. "It continued to funnel Imperial army hopefuls into the Academies. Eventually, even their only daughter, Larmé Sarena."

"But against the parents' will," Kenobi guessed. It didn't seem very plausible they would relinquish their hold on their only child and heir, and give her up to a bloody war.

"That would be correct," Organa replied. "By the time Larmé Sarena wanted to join, her parents' Imperial service had grown considerably. Secretaries upon secretaries, agencies upon agencies. A vast underground bureaucracy. The Naronas sat at the top like royalty – applications no longer filtered upward to them. So it was simple for Larmé Sarena to change her name to Lena Narona and file an application."

"What with 'Narona' being such a common Nubian surname," Mare added.

"Exactly. She slipped through the system and joined an Imperial Academy. And here's where the story gets very interesting. But you must first excuse me for a moment, ladies and gentlemen, while I find a glass of water."

As the senator signaled for the protocol droid at the door, Kenobi leaned in and folded his arms across the table. He ignored the cold marble pressing into his ribcage, and realized that unlike the countless number of meetings he had attended before, this one had managed to hold his rapt attention.

The history Organa was revealing to them seemed like a bedtime story the older Padawans used to whisper to younglings on stormy nights at the Jedi temple. He recalled the tales he had spun to the huddled clusters of wide-eyed children, now all slaughtered and dead and scattered to the four winds. He had told tales of the dangers of the Dark Side, mostly – fables designed to strengthen the belief in the Jedi code. And they had almost always ended in tragedy for the poor misguided Jedi, the woefully imprudent abusers of the Force.

Tragedy. He sensed that it was a path toward which Organa's story was quickly veering. Except, he corrected himself, it wasn't a mere story that had been embellished and enhanced through generations of repetition. It was a factual lifeline, and it was _Lena's_ lifeline, and Lena was the main character, that fallen, broken main character…

At that moment Kenobi felt slashing through the Force a rare moment of premonition. Unlike Anakin Skywalker's vividly detailed dreams of the future, the premonitions he received were more akin to brief flashes of feelings rather than prolonged visions. And this one – pain.

Not physical pain, but something else much deeper and more private, and right then and there in the middle of the conference room, surrounded by a senator and three secretaries, he felt it gouge through him like someone had taken a shovel and dug out his heart.

A cold sweat broke out across his forehead as the premonition left him. In the name of the Force! He clenched his left fist, relaxed it, splayed his perspiring fingers over the icy tabletop. _A Jedi should feel no fear. _It had left him too quickly, he realized. It had left before he could discern whose pain it was. His or hers? Or both of theirs?

What was going to happen to him, or to _her_, that would cause such horrible pain?

No – damnation! Why did he still continuously factor Lena into his thoughts when she was effectively out of his range of concern forever? When the necessary questions were answered and the meeting adjourned, he would walk out of this room and leave all further procedures regarding the Imperial operation – and that was all she was – to the capable members of the Rebel base.

His work here would be finished.

It _needed_ to be – light years away, on the baking, sunlit dunes of a desert planet, a little boy awaited his protection, while he languished here in a sunless, climate controlled conference room…

A hand was tapping hesitantly at his shoulder. "General Kenobi?"

He turned to the owner of the hand – it was Cam'ria Ban who had spoken, and now she was regarding him worriedly out of lidless black eyes. "You feel all right, General? You look white. Ill."

He inhaled sharply to disperse the shadows churning within him, and to shake the traces of the premonition from his bones. Brought himself to the present moment. "I'm fine, Secretary Ban. Simply a little tired from last night. I had – oh, never mind." He tilted his chin toward Organa, who had finished his glass of water and was resuming his position at the head of the table. "The meeting's starting again."

"As I was saying, ladies and gentlemen, here is where the story gets interesting," Organa declared in a newly hydrated voice once the side conversations had trickled to a stop. "I told you before that the Naronas charged three thousand credits for every individual they sent to the militia. But this was not the price they had reported to the Republic, and later the Empire. The reported price…"

Another document scan blinked into the holo-projector. It was the business agreement, signed by both Emperor Palpatine in his thin, spidery handwriting, and by the Naronas in their similarly small and cramped signatures. Kenobi scanned the document until he found the pertinent details. Two thousand credits must be paid per person, it said. Eighty percent of which would go directly toward the Empire for Academy expenses. This left twenty percent to the Duke and Duchess.

He felt his lips twisting into a humorless smile. "The Naronas under-reported their price to Palpatine himself, and kept an entire _thousand_ credits for every individual they transferred."

The Ithorian Chig Nugla let out an odd-sounding scoff through his twin mouths. "They must have prospered."

"That they most certainly did," Organa replied. "They quickly became one of the most influential families on Naboo – nearly became _the_ most influential family, if it weren't for the fact that Larmé Sarena escaped before the parents could marry her off to the widowed father of the queen-elect. If they had succeeded with the marriage, under Naboo's matriarchal laws, all of the royal powers would have flowed straight to the Naronas. All the money. The control. They would have owned Naboo within the week."

Lena had known. Kenobi held his surprise in check. The night he had rescued her, she had told him that she'd chosen to enlist in order to avoid a stifling marriage, but he couldn't believe her explanation anymore – not fully, anyway. She _must_ have known of the consequences of the union; it would have given her power and luxury beyond her wildest dreams. Yet, despite it all, she had fled it. Perhaps she had felt the injustice of it, the web of deception behind her parents' lucrative business…

And then it became clear to him, the reason why she had chosen to throw away her riches to don the spotless, faceless mask of the Stormtrooper. She wanted to escape the lies of the outwardly peaceful and politically neutral planet. She wanted to live for a clean, untainted stability. For truth.

Two emotions welled up within him. One was sadness – _Oh, Lena, you could have picked something else, anything else but this… _The other was admiration. He kept both at bay. He ordered himself for the hundredth time that matters regarding the Imperial situation should no longer stir him personally, and that he, as a practitioner of the Jedi code, needed to remain calm. Focused. Collected.

Untangled in the sticky, inescapable mess that was human emotion.

He held up a questioning finger to Organa. "What is the situation with the Naronas now? Still rich? Still powerful?"

"Well…" The senator paused, and an electric silence filled the conference room as each met the anticipating glances of another. "That depends on us," he finished.

Ban let out a high-pitched squeak through her tiny, puckered mouth. "What do you mean, senator? Please clarify."

"See, we're certain that the Emperor does not yet know of the Naronas' deception."

"And why is that?"

"Because the Naronas are still alive. If the Emperor knew, they most certainly would not be. _If _Palpantine knew."

Kenobi understood now; he had unfolded the subtle layers of diplomatic double-talk that had streamed like coded messages into his ears, and now Organa's proposed plan of action lay starkly before him like the text scrolling across a children's holo-book. "What the senator means to say," he translated into the room, "is that we may use the knowledge of the parent Naronas to our advantage while dealing with Larmé Sarena. We give her two options. Either she tells us the location of the Imperial planet, or we send a message to the Emperor of her parents' deception, and her parents will surely be assassinated. Blackmail."

A hushed, troubled silence marred by harsh intakes of breath. The squeal of a chair as it swiveled. Tension mounted in the Force like sand in a storm, and it dissipated only when Bail Organa coughed uncomfortably into a fist.

"Yes. What General Kenobi said is… very roughly… the idea," the senator declared stiffly; Kenobi did not miss the glare Organa had cast his way, and he sensed, too late, that perhaps this had not been the most politically correct thing to say. He clambered for a patch-up. "Of course, I didn't mean that—"

"Now, the reason I mention this idea to all of you," Organa interrupted, "is that I am fully aware of its implications and its ethics. In fact, this issue hits especially close to home, since I am a settled family man, and I have a single young daughter of my own. So I am _fully_ aware of its ethical dilemmas, ladies and gentlemen. Fully aware."

Kenobi settled back into his chair and gave up. He had said the wrong thing – he had said the truth, but the wrong thing. Again. Unlike the half-jesting annoyance he had felt from the senator earlier this morning, the wounded indignation that now flowed from Organa was soberly serious. And if he wasn't mistaken, did he detect an oblique personal attack in his friend's words as well? _Settled family man… single young daughter._ Given his status as a Jedi master, this was a world he would never understand… so how could he presume to venture to break of the infinite bonds of family love?

He sighed. He would have to talk to Organa after the meeting, try to assuage the unfortunate bruise he had just caused in their friendship…

"Technically, though, Senator Organa's plan is not in any way illegal," Nugla declared stereophonically, the two mouths on the either side of his flat neck opening and closing simultaneously. "The galaxy, officially, is still in a state of war. There hasn't been active fighting for years, but no peace agreement or treaty has been signed either. Palpatine simply crowned himself the Emperor – that doesn't constitute a peace treaty. So as of now, Stormtrooper A-186 is our prisoner in a war that is still raging. The options that Organa proposed don't violate the prisoner of war codes outlined in the Just War Convention. I move that we go through with this brilliant plan."

"But…" Marina Mare exhaled unevenly, clasping her translucent hands together beneath her chin. "Secretary Nugla, I understand that it's a legal move. But, still, deep down I feel that it's… it's not something that we _should_ be doing."

"Why not?" Nugla countered. His suppressed irritation mixed with Mare's indecisive anxiety in the Force, filled Kenobi's brain with conflicting static. "If she gives us the location of the primary Imperial planet, trillions upon trillions of lives will be saved. A full-blown war between the Empire and the Rebellion doesn't even have to start!"

"But she's just a girl, Chig—"

"A Stormtrooper," he corrected.

"A human being." Mare's gray eyes hardened. "Underneath that armor is a young human being who deserves to be treated as so. If she refuses to tell us, we'll be murdering her parents with our bare hands."

"Which gives her all the more reason to comply with us! And the officials at the holding cell _are_ treating her as humanely as possible, I assure you, Secretary Mare. If you're ever doubtful, check the surveillance tapes, which are available at any public library or database across Alderaan. And if you're still worried, then think of the estimated ten thousand Rebel prisoners the Empire is holding hostage, two hundred of whom are Ithorian, seven thousand of whom are human. What kind of treatment are they receiving when they're sent home missing body parts and inner organs? How much longer does this need to go—"

"Secretaries!" Organa called, raising both arms in the air like an air traffic director. "Secretaries, secretaries. Please. All this dialogue just goes to show that this topic is… sensitive indeed. I propose we all go home and think about it _calmly _for a day, then convene again tomorrow morning with our ideas."

The senator continued on for several more minutes with more trivial announcements, but Kenobi had already drawn his awareness back inside himself. What to do with the Imperial operation? _What to do?_

What stand should he take?

Well, it hardly mattered what he felt emotionally about it – for a Jedi, personal emotions always stood secondary to the grand flowing rhythms of the Force. And if a drastic action needed to be taken to prevent a catastrophe… then let it be, he thought.

And as the senator and the secretaries filed out of the conference room and he rose to follow them, he reminded himself that all this had been the fruit of his idea.

"Obi-Wan?" A voice at his shoulder. It was Bail Organa.

"Yes, Bail?"

"We need to talk this afternoon, Obi-Wan. Meet me in the garden two hours after lunch. You…" He trailed off, and Kenobi sensed that the indignation in his blood had cooled and given away to a weary regret. "You take care, my friend," he finished, and swiftly left.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

To be continued. Thanks for reviewing, everyone! Please leave comments! Flames, constructive criticism welcome.


	5. Complications

THE QUARRY

By: Scatterheart a.k.a. Hallospacegirl

- - - - - - - - - - - -

CHAPTER FIVE: COMPLICATIONS

"Bail, I must apologize to you for the comments I made earlier—"

"No, Obi-Wan, I'm the one who owes you an apology." Bail Organa let his shoulders slouch tiredly as he strolled with the Jedi down the pebbled garden path. "What you said was exactly what I had wanted to say."

"Just incredibly crudely," Kenobi answered with a wry smile, catching a stray yellow leaf by the stem as it cartwheeled from a nearby shade-tree. "I'm no politician, Bail. I never was, and I never will be."

"I wholeheartedly agree, old friend." They shared a quiet laugh; a slight breeze wafted from the east, and the Jedi master released the leaf into the air, following its passage beyond the trees and around the base of the metallic Rebellion headquarters, until up, up it flew, and out of sight.

They continued on, lapsing into a comfortable silence.

The oblique, late afternoon sun was slanting through the emerald shade-trees lining the walk, and beyond the silhouettes of the rustling large leaves, the first of three silvery moons could be been emerging wispily into the swirling azure sky.

While Kenobi took in the sights around him with a thinly veiled thirst glittering in his otherwise steady, tranquil blue eyes, Organa felt strangely detached from the beauty of the garden – the fatigue of a sleepless thirty-six standard hours had overridden the minor adrenalin stimulants coursing through his circulatory system and had caught up with him at last. The flat yet persistent headache that had been plaguing him since morning gave a sour jolt as the senator realized that the approaching evening provided him no luxury of resting his head against a pillow for even a minute.

He considered briefly – very briefly – leaving his friend and retreating inside for a quick nap… but no, dual senatorial and Rebellion duties required even this. A hospitable stroll with a friend. A sandbox romp with his daughter. A dance of the Alderaanian Reel at a ball with his wife. All preferably within sight of a few galactic Rebel journalists, who would then go on to ease the minds of the rest of the Rebel Alliance with stories of a successful, strong, and even happy Rebellion.

And as he glanced at the Jedi master, who was admiring a violet tree-flower with as much unabashed curiosity as a child, he felt another twinge of guilt biting into his heart. He detested thinking of his loved ones as but necessary accessories to the great political scheme, and he detested the fact that the more the Empire spread its inky fingers across the galaxy, the more he found himself wandering in those murky, ungrateful areas of his mind. But what else was there for him to do? Rebellion morale was falling, and the Empire was rising.

And now, this. Larmé Sarena Narona of Naboo. By the Maker, if she could just tell them this _one_ name, that one tiny name of the Imperial planet, then all of this would end right _now_. He would force her to do it himself, if he could. Force her do to it himself if it weren't for the laws and the eyes and journalists guiding and chiding his every move…

"You shouldn't be here with me, Bail," Kenobi's mellifluous voice flowed smoothly into the quiet.

Organa started, tucked the dangerous thoughts that had somehow crawled into his mind away from the Jedi's always-inquisitive eyes. And from himself. He absolutely couldn't think this way; there were lines that he had pledged he wouldn't cross, no matter what the situation. "And why is that?" he queried, attempting – miserably, he figured – to inject some semblance of humor into his tone.

"You're tired. Your entire aura shakes of it. Go to sleep for a while."

He stopped in his tracks and leaned against the rough trunk of a shade tree, ignoring the protesting snags of the blue silk robe on his back. There would always be another robe, another ridiculously expensive set of attire he would be forced to wear in order to boost the credibility of the Rebellion image. "There's still much to do before tomorrow morning, Obi-Wan. Contacting other Rebellion leaders about the budget on Dantooine, inquiring about the hostage situation on Chad, sending out personal invitations to an Alliance gala coming up next month. And the Imperial operation. Larmé Sarena." He winced. He sounded like a whining adolescent.

"You need someone to take the burden from you, my friend," Kenobi replied.

"No, these are all things I must do myself." Then he smiled, resignedly. "I guess the only person who can help me is my cafeena-drink brewer droid."

It seemed as though the joke had been lost on the Jedi master, who continued in a concerned, even tone, "I'll be honest, Bail. I won't be able to help you on issues I have no knowledge of. But what about Lena?"

"What _about_ Lena?" Organa returned, and wondered if Kenobi's hidden invitation was what he had been yearning to hear all along.

"I've had personal contact with Lena. I know her – I know her slightly better than any of you, that is. If you're looking for someone to lead the interrogations—"

"You, Obi-Wan? But I can't." He eased himself from the tree and continued down the path.

"Why not?" The Jedi master matched his steps. "You say with your voice that you can't, but I sense that you do."

It was useless trying to feign anything from him; Organa abandoned the effort. "There are two reasons why you can't, and neither one of them is because _I _don't want you to. It just doesn't feel right to me, as a friend, to put you to work like we've been doing. You've already done us the biggest of all favors by just showing up with her. And now you're supposed to be our guest – but what are you doing instead? Working from the moment you stepped from that ship. If—"

"Bail," the Jedi interjected gently, "in times like these we're not allowed in indulge in hospitality. Leave our personal friendship for the peace after the storm. Work now for the greater good, _both_ of us. The peace will come sooner if we do."

He sighed, raggedly. "There's a second reason."

"And what's that?"

"Some at this base have wanted an opportunity like this – have trained and dreamt of an opportunity like this – for years. No, decades."

"For a chance to interrogate an Imperial?"

"For the information that it will gain," he responded firmly. "For the chance to revive the Rebellion from its current stagnation. You do it and you take away their dreams."

"I have no desire for recognition."

"I know. But they do."

"What do you mean by 'they'? All the members at this base, or just several in particular?"

He glanced sidelong at the Jedi, and realized that the slightly younger man had already read him like a holo-book. He took a furtive scan of the serenity around them, a habitual action from the years of war that he could not hope to unlearn. Then he said, "Chig Nugla. He's a trained interrogator. From the beginning, he's been pressuring me to let him to take control of the interrogations. But last night I only sent untrained cadets. Chig, understandably, grew very dissatisfied with that. So now either I personally take over, or he'll find a way to muscle himself past the cadets."

They had reached a small gazebo at the end of the walk; it was constructed from a seamless blend of buffed durasteel and a mesh of entwined white vines. A web as complicated as the mess they were getting into now, he thought as he entered with Kenobi and settled into the nearest bench.

The Jedi chose the bench opposite him. "There's more," he stated. It wasn't even a question.

"Yes, there's more," Organa responded. "If you remember from this morning, Chig mentioned that two hundred Ithorians were captured by the Empire as hostages. Tortured brutally, then killed. He didn't mention that five of these Ithorians were members of his family. His wife, his two sons, his uncle, and his sister." He searched Kenobi's face for any sign of surprise, but the Jedi continued regarding him with the same serene and focused gaze.

"Personal entanglements complicate things," Kenobi finally said, running his hand along the web of vines that formed the seat of his bench. "It's best if you employed someone with a neutral background."

"Neutral? Who here at this base can possibly be entirely neutral, Obi-Wan? Are you neutral? That's why we're here – we've all lost something to the Empire. Some more than others."

The Jedi's features formed a sad little smile at that. "Yes, you're right, Bail. I was wrong," he replied, quietly.

Organa inhaled deeply in an effort to dissipate the tension that had gathered in his brain and that he had unfortunately released upon his friend. "What I'm trying to say is that I _want_ you to do it. By the Maker, you may be no politician, but you talk better than him or me. You have those – those Jedi mind skills to help you out. And it's true you know that Stormtrooper better than any of us, combined. Obi-Wan, if you truly want this assignment, then I'm prepared to talk to Chig, and—"

Through the trees and bushes, a small flurry of pink appeared, running toward the gazebo with lacy arms outstretched. With a little cry of "Daddy!" it clambered up the steps and leapt into Organa's arms, a tiny, warm ball that made his heart swell, ache with emotion.

"Leia, darling," he whispered into his daughter's tangled brown hair, and held her close, as though at any moment an Imperial speeder would swoop down from the sky and spirit her away. And maybe it could. He had been repeatedly assured that this Rebel base was completely hidden from the Empire – and perhaps it was – still, he didn't know anymore. "Leia, what are you doing by yourself?" he asked, peering into her flushed, dirt-stained face. He wiped a smudge away from her cheek with a thumb. "And _what_ were you doing?"

"Playing soldiers with C-5MO." She grinned. "He chased me but I got away."

"Leia, I don't think he was playing. I think he was telling you to stop running around in the mud in your new dress that you're not supposed to wear until the gala."

"But Mommy said I could."

"Well, then your mommy's spoiling you way too much." He gave her a smacking kiss on the top of her forehead. By the Maker, he would spoil her, give her anything she wanted, build her a castle out of diamonds and never let her go…

She squirmed in his lap. "Daddy, who's that?"

Organa blinked; he had momentarily forgotten about Obi-Wan Kenobi. He looked over at the Jedi, and found that the Jedi was regarding the two of them with a smile… and yet he seemed sad, Organa guessed. Utterly sad and a billion light years away. "Obi-Wan, this is Leia," he said. "Leia, this is Obi-Wan Kenobi. He's a—" He hesitated, searched for words. "He's a politician. And he's a friend of Mommy and Daddy's."

Kenobi bent over and extended a hand. Leia took his index finger in a grubby grip, and they shook. "Hello there, Leia Organa."

For the most fleeting of moments Organa met eyes with the Jedi and he recalled the day before on the landing strip; Kenobi had called her Leia Skywalker then, and had flushed in awkward shame at the senator's curt reply. And perhaps he should not have had bristled in that fashion, since Skywalker _was_ her given surname… but Leia was an Organa, pure and simple, Bail reminded himself. In heart, in spirit, and in soul.

"Obi-Wan Kenobi, you don't look like a pol'tician," Leia was saying. "They're all fat and angry. They don't like me. They don't talk to me."

"Leia—" Organa frowned at her. "—don't be rude."

Kenobi grinned, laughed. "Appearances can be very deceiving, little one. Maybe not all politicians are fat and angry."

"But I don't _feel_ that you're a pol'tician," she declared, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. "And my feelings are always right."

Kenobi gravitated closer. "Oh? And what else do these… feelings of yours tell you about me, little one?"

"I saw you before."

"You saw me before? How peculiar. What was I doing?"

"I don't know. It was a long, long time ago. I think you looked diff'rent – all brown and hairy and stuff. I was very small. Not big like I am now."

Organa felt his heart skip a beat. Maker, she couldn't have remembered. But as fiercely as he tried to deny it, the truth couldn't be erased – it had been Obi-Wan Kenobi, not him, who had helped deliver her from Padmé Amidala's womb, who had been the first to hold her bloody, raw newborn body in his arms and look into that round, angelic little face.

_But no five-year-old could remember an event from birth!_

Or maybe she possessed the same special Force sensitivity that Kenobi and the rest of the Jedis did. Maybe she had inherited it from her fath – from Anakin Skywalker. The same curse. Almost subconsciously, he held her closer.

"Hey, Obi-Wan," she said, struggling halfheartedly to loosen Organa's embrace. "Do you want to talk to my invis'ble friend?"

"Invisible friend? Why, certainly. What's her name?"

"It's a boy."

"Is he your boyfriend, little one?"

"Ugh, no!" She wrinkled her nose in distaste. "I don't like boys in _that_ way. This one's diff'rent, though. He's like my brother. His name's Lu—"

Enough. "Leia, run along. You have to leave Daddy and Obi-Wan alone now," Organa said, barely keeping the tightness in his throat in check. "We've got a lot of grown-up business to talk about. I'll see you at dinner, all right?"

"But, Daddy, you _never _listen to me about my invis'ble friend!"

"I know, dear, but now you have to run along."

"Daddy, I want to talk to Obi-Wan—"

"Bail, excuse me, but it's time for me to go." It was Kenobi. He rose from the bench, smoothed his white tunic with his hands, and gave an almost apologetic bow. "As the situation stands, I suggest you let Secretary Nugla handle the Imperial situation for now. I implore you, Bail, to get some rest. I'll see you at the meeting tomorrow."

"I… of course. Until tomorrow then, Obi-Wan," Organa said, and watched as the Jedi waved to Leia and, amid the sound of Leia's protests, strolled down the path that led to the headquarters and disappeared within.

Organa sighed in his wake, rubbed the bridge of his nose with two fingers. He wondered why he hadn't refused the Jedi's request to leave, and wondered why he hadn't let the conversation between his daughter and Kenobi continue. It would have been the most civil course of action, but somehow, the words they had exchanged had unnerved him.

No, he was lying to himself – they had frightened him out of his wits. And he felt a sudden, irrational resentment toward Obi-Wan Kenobi for continuing with it, exploring the side of his daughter that he would never be strong enough to face himself.

"Daddy?" Leia was poking at his arm gently and searching him with large blue eyes. "You're not happy," she said, simply.

He met her gaze and saw his innocent daughter and the wise, Force-sensitive Skywalker heir staring back. And he realized with a strange, breaking feeling in his chest that the latter part of her would remain entwined with the former for as long as she lived. As meshed as the vines that formed the gazebo. As tightly held together as the fabric of life itself. He crushed her to his chest. "It's nothing, my darling," he said. _It's just a father's love._

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Secretary Chig Nugla did not look like the most triumphant Ithorian in the galaxy, Obi-Wan Kenobi noted in wry amusement as the council filed into the conference room the following morning. His slatted brown eyes, set high on a flat, curved head, were rolling agitatedly in reddened sockets as he lumbered to the nearest chair and lowered his large frame into it.

"She won't cooperate," he croaked out as soon as the four other members had settled into their places. His voice echoed disjointedly from two mouths that refused to function quite on unison. "I tried all night. She simply wouldn't cooperate."

"No names? No contacts? Not even a hint?" Cam'ria Ban remarked, rubbing her glossy, high forehead with a palm. "What were the tactics you employed, Secretary Nugla?"

Kenobi felt the Ithorian's indignation flare furiously through the Force; visibly, however, Nugla remained deflated, weary, and slumped. His complete exhaustion was overriding the righteous, vengeful temper he had displayed in this very room the day before. "I assure you, I tried everything, Secretary Ban," he said, hoarsely. "I spent fifteen standard hours with her – enough time to test every tactic within ethical boundaries." He scoffed. "It's obvious that this Stormtrooper has been trained to handle interrogation to the limits. Why are we hesitating in dealing out our top card – her parents' tainted contract with Palpatine – when we know nothing else will win this game?"

Marina Mare drew in a prolonged, thin breath. "It's highly unusual for even a Stormtrooper not to utter a single word during an interrogation. Perhaps—"

Chig Nugla shook his ribbon-like head. "I didn't say that. She did speak."

"And?"

"And…" Nugla's stereo voice trailed off unevenly, and Kenobi realized that the Ithorian's bleary, reddened eyes had traveled from Mare and now were fixed on his, even as he addressed the entire company. "I think you should see for yourselves, ladies and gentlemen. Senator Organa, if you please, bring up the surveillance tapes from yesterday."

A button was pressed, and a moment later, the holo-projector at the center of the table buzzed into life and a blue static spread across the entire marble tabletop. Then the static shifted, swirled, and condensed into a three-dimensional image approximately a meter in height.

Obi-Wan Kenobi stared into Larmé Sarena Narona's unflinching, fiery bronze eyes.

Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew that the woman was simply a hologram projection of the night before, a series of calculated numbers that had been fed into a machine and spat out from a bluish, high-density lens. But due to the angle of the surveillance camera and the position at which he was sitting, Kenobi could see her – _really_ see her as though she were standing directly across from him and staring at him with that defiant, magnetic gaze.

His heart gave a very sudden lurch and began accelerating against his ribcage. Nervousness, he recognized. Why in the name of the Force was he actually nervous? It didn't matter – he needed to get rid of that blastedly juvenile emotion. He considered submersing himself in the simple breathing exercise that Qui-Gon had taught him during the early years of his training. But that would entail closing his eyes, shutting himself from the image not ten centimeters before him…

He kept his eyes open. He absorbed every flickering detail of the figure in the hologram, from the way the white, Alliance-issued knee-length tunic draped over her slim body to the way the durasteel handcuffs twisted at her wrists. Her head, mostly, he lingered over, for the tumbling black locks that had once framed her pale face had now been shaved into a hasty, three-centimeter prison cut that exposed her dainty ears, high cheekbones, slender throat.

Was that why her face now seemed so… so…

Kenobi was at a loss for words, decided not to try to dig any further. He clasped his hands under the table and resisted the irrational urge to reach out into the cool blue light and perhaps run the back of his fingers along the newly shorn nape of her neck—

"Once again, A-186, tell us the location of the Imperial planet," Chig Nugla's tinny, recorded voice issued from a speaker somewhere within the computer. "You needn't be afraid to reveal any information to us. No harm will come to you."

The Lena in the hologram smiled. It was a smile that could freeze even the lakes of Mustafar, and a smile Kenobi had never seen cross her features before.

The Ithorian released a double-sigh. Apparently several grueling hours had already passed prior to this snippet of holo-vid. "A-186, I'll been here wasting our time since dusk, and I'll continue to be here all night if the situation calls for it. You don't want that. I don't want that. So do us both a favor and tell me the location of the Imperial planet. Its name, its quadrant – anything."

The smile.

"Look, contrary to what you may have heard at the academy, the Rebel Alliance isn't a group of power-hungry Outer Rim militants who want to take over the galactic government. We stand for truth and compassion—"

The smile, wider this time.

"—for every being in this galaxy. Yes, even you. Can't you see that your Empire will give you none of these things? A-186, Lena, contrary to what you may think, your Empire doesn't care about you. To the Emperor, you're just a _number_ that he may use in any way – legal or otherwise – to increase his own power. To him, you're a machine behind that helmet. You're laser fodder. You're nothing. He doesn't care whether you're living or dead. When he's finished with you, he'll simply toss you away like a droid – there's plenty more to take your place. So, Lena, why are you still standing beside this criminal, this _thug_, when we can work together to unseat him from his unreasonable power and hold him accountable for all his crimes in a galactic court? Help me, Lena. Help yourself. Help _all_ the citizens in the galaxy. Share with me the information that you have and I don't – the name of the Imperial planet. All right? Give me a name."

The smile softened as the pause stretched out between them like a chasm. Then, "Obi-Wan Kenobi," she said, softly.

Kenobi's breath caught in his throat. An unsettled murmur fluttered through the conference room, then a suffocating tightness in the Force gripped him as all four pairs of eyes – and even the digital essences in the hologram, it seemed – turned their undivided focus to him. Hours of interrogation and the first words uttered had been _his_ name… Kenobi felt a strange, falling sensation in the pit of his stomach.

"What – what do you mean, Obi-Wan Kenobi?" Nugla was sputtering in the hologram, his trained façade audibly crackling. "Does he have information? Is this a clue? A hint?"

She shook her head, once. "I will only speak with Obi-Wan Kenobi."

"Well, I'm afraid you can't tonight. He's unavailable now," the Ithorian replied curtly.

Kenobi let out a quick breath. Unavailable? Nugla could have come and knocked on his door, wakened him from the horrid clutches of a nightmare-laden sleep, and dragged him to the prison in two standard timeparts – it wouldn't have been difficult.

Unavailable? He smothered the churning, rising fire from the depths of his chest. It was an emotion that the Jedi code expressly forbade…

"I will only speak with Obi-Wan Kenobi," Lena repeated, and Nugla remained silent for a long time before continuing.

"You can't speak to Obi-Wan Kenobi because he's unauthorized to deal with this… situation. Regardless of what he may have told you on your trip here, he's a Jedi knight. Not a politician, nor a general. He's a Jedi."

If Lena had reacted to that statement, it didn't show upon her expressionless face. "I will only speak with him," she said again, unhurriedly. "I will only speak with Obi-Wan Kenobi."

"There is no difference speaking to Obi-Wan, or to me, or to anybody else. The information you give will go where it needs to go in the most efficient manner, in the shortest amount of time. It doesn't matter, A-186, whether you speak to Obi-Wan or not."

"I will only speak with him."

A muffled thud issued from the speakers. Off-camera, Chig Nugla must have pounded his fist against a wall in frustration. "Obi-Wan is unavailable tonight. I'm the only person who'll be able to talk to you, and if you don't like me here right now, there's nothing either one of us can do about it."

"I will only speak with Obi-Wan—"

Click.

The blue-tinged images vanished from the marble tabletop as Bail Organa pressed the deactivation button on his handheld keyboard. "I think we've seen enough," he said. "I'm assuming this continued all night in a similar vein, Secretary Nugla?"

"She must have said that sentence a thousand times," the Ithorian rasped, blinking his swollen eyes at Kenobi.

And suddenly he realized that Nugla wasn't the only person staring at him as though in expectation; everyone was, including the golden protocol droid nestled in the corner of the room. The Force droned, throbbed about him like a live wire, and he clenched his fingers tightly beneath the table to channel away the pain that had taken up residence in his chest and in his mind.

"Under the circumstances…" Kenobi began in a smooth voice that hardly matched the turmoil beneath his vocal chords. They were waiting patiently for him, nodding at every syllable that left his mouth. He swallowed and resumed. "Under the circumstances, it'll be best if I talk to her tonight. Secretary Nugla is right – I'm no politician and I have no training, but if the Imperial insists on speaking to me, it would only move our operation forward if I go to her."

- - - - - - - - - - - -

The Imperial holding cell was a small room at the end of the pearl-white basement hallway of the military complex. The complex, a smaller, significantly less spectacular structure than the Rebel headquarters, faced the shining silver building from across a wide, empty expanse of landing strip.

Obi-Wan Kenobi had seen the camouflaged blaster cannons and security cameras lining the landing strip all the way up to the military complex; security was well concealed but lethal here, designed to divert as much of the potential danger away from the Rebel headquarters as possible.

He was still musing over the Alderaanian architectural design as he descended the stairs to the basement, which was flanked every ten meters by a gray-uniformed guard. Leia Skywalker was safe here at the Rebel base. Sheltered here. Happy here, while her brother Luke sweated upon the Tusken-filled plains of Tattooine. Perhaps it had been a mistake splitting the two souls apart, and perhaps, Kenobi admitted grudgingly, he had not trusted the safety of Alderaan quite as much as he should have. Instinct, while a powerful tool, was not always correct – maybe that time he had relied too heavily upon his own neuroses regarding the Empire, rather than submitting himself to fact and truth…

He stopped at the opaque white durasteel door of the holding cell. The male Mon Calamari guard who had trailed three steps behind now came up beside him. "Are you ready for me to open the door, sir?"

"Yes, Tetran," Kenobi replied after a short exhalation.

As he pressed the code buttons on the wall panel, Tetran said, "Remember that we'll be monitoring the both of you on a surveillance camera. Backup forces will be dispatched should anything go wrong during the interrogation process."

"Thank you."

"Good luck, sir." The door slid open with the short whiz of compressed air.

Lena.

She sat at the small white table in the center of the cramped, bare, white cell. White, clear light hummed from the copious orbs on the ceiling, glinting off of the sleek, durasteel chains that connected each of her wrists to the wall behind her. Her prisoner's tunic, too, shimmered in white folds as it clung to her body. Even her once sun-tinged face, Kenobi noticed, seemed unnaturally porcelain pale under the merciless cast of the room.

Only her eyes burned with that bronze, old-gold fire.

He couldn't leave them as he strode into the room and sat into the empty chair opposite her. The door hissed shut; he barely heard it through the warm rushing sound that had started inside his ears.

Had it only been two days since he'd seen her last? It felt like two _years_ of absence – perhaps the Alderaanian day stretched much longer than the Tattooinian one. Perhaps—

"You're staring, Obi-Wan Kenobi," she said. That same silky contralto that he felt he had known forever. And then she actually smiled at him, a ghost of a smirk flitting across her full lips. She folded her arms in front of her, the chains from her wrists rattling with her movements, and she regarded him coolly from underneath fringes of heavy eyelashes. Patiently.

"Lena," Kenobi said. His voice came out too rough; he cleared his throat. "Lena, I…"

Silence. The quiet tinkling of the chains.

By the Force, he didn't know what to say. Why had he not prepared a list of questions? Guidelines at the very least? And he realized that he had purposely avoided thinking of this moment up until… well, until he stepped through the door. _Why?_

The silence stretched between them like the shadowless expanse of white light flooding into every corner of the tiny cell, and the Force shivered around them like a muffled, unheard cry.

And then she sniffed disdainfully. Tossed her head in a fashion that would have cleared her tresses from her shoulders, had they not been cut cleanly away. "Say something, Obi-Wan Kenobi. News bulletin: you're supposed to be interrogating me."

Kenobi sighed. A minute into the session and the fatigue had already settled into his bones. "Lena, listen—"

"At this rate, you're not going to be able to interrogate the name out of a three-year-old child. You've already done the glorious task of capturing a living Stormtrooper. Congratulations, Obi-Wan. Now why are they forcing such an… _accomplished_ man like yourself to do their dirty work?"

He knew the answer to that. "You asked for me, Lena."

"And now you're here. Just like that." Her smile twisted into a sneer. "What is this game that you're playing, Obi-Wan? What? Your attempt at an apology for what you did?"

"It's not a game, and I'm not apologizing for anything. I did what I needed to do in my position."

Now even the sneer dropped into something thoroughly frozen. Deadly. "I thought so… Jedi." It sounded like a curse. "I suppose that among the countless rules of your little religion –no anger, no love, no revenge – no deceit _isn't_ one of them? Or what about _using_ people like pawns? Doing your clever mind tricks and making them agree to anything you want? Then making them _forget_ at your convenience?" Her voice escalated in volume as she leaned across the table, a rising tide of pure emotion that was threatening to explode.

Kenobi couldn't move, couldn't breathe as her presence in the Force assaulted him like a weapon.

"Don't look at me like that, Obi-Wan. You fooled me before, but you can't do it again. They told me all about your kind at the Academy. What was your creed again? 'There is no emotion – there is only peace'? It's not hard to figure out that _remorse_ isn't one of your top priorities." She snorted. "Congratulations, again. You're a perfect agent for the Rebel Alliance. In the name of peace, democracy, and freedom, indeed!"

Her face was but a few centimeters away from his, and she strived to move closer, but the taut chains at her wrists clattered and held her back.

By the Maker, at this distance she was…

Kenobi caught himself. Every nerve and fiber of his being was on fire from her glare, and he realized with a twinge of – fear? – that the dangerous mental floodgates the Jedi always kept shut had been thrown fully open, and that it was impossible for him to close them now. Not with her in the same room. Not with the Force reeling through him, filling him with the power of her emotions.

_What in the name of the Force was _wrong_ with him? _No Jedi master should be in this state. This raw, uncontrolled, untrained state that even a mediocre Padawan would not have entered.

Damnation, even now he was reaching out with a hand – he saw the angry purple bruise running beneath her jaw and chin, the mark of the suicide attempt two nights ago – and now he was tracing his index finger lightly over it, reaching out with the Force and willing some of the tender pain away as the rest of his fingers slid silkily over the warm skin of her neck…

Lena clattered back into her chair. She looked stunned. "Don't…" she began, her voice wavering. "Don't do that."

He lowered his hand, feeling a frown knit his brow. Whatever he had done… even he didn't know what had compelled him to do _that_. He took a deep breath. "Larmé Sarena Narona, please cooperate with me," he said.

"I'm not telling you anything." Her tone sounded considerably subdued, as though all the animosity had drained out of her through that touch, and now she was left weary and tired and calm. "Go ahead. Ask me all night. I will not give you the location of the Imperial planet."

"You can try to resist now, but they'll pry it from you sooner or later, Lena."

She cocked her head in a small gesture of disbelief. "Excuse me, 'they'? You mean _'we'_. I'm not stupid to your Rebellion affiliation, Obi-Wan, and I know your entire bag of tricks. Yesterday your sadist friend Chig Nugla dealt me the 'no-one-gives-Bantha-fodder-about-you' card. Now you're dealing me the '_they_-made-me-do-it' card. You might as well give up now, because I'm not going to tell you even if you put a torch to my body and burn me alive."

"Lena," he said, as steadily and seriously as he possibly could, "_we're_ holding much higher stakes than you can see. Believe me on this one."

"What, then? Sleep deprivation? The medi-torture device? The threat of lethal injection? Believe _me_ when I say that I can handle them."

Kenobi kept down the rising discomfort of frustration. "If you continue with your silence, you'll be hurt much more deeply than you can possibly imagine."

"Why, that sounded awfully like a threat, Obi-Wan," Lena said, scornfully, narrowing her eyes at him. Intensity still burned through them like twin flames licking from an incinerator grate.

He thought of her parents – he sensed her attachment to them running in an invisible umbilical cord to the faraway planet of Naboo. He said, "I'm only telling you what I know."

A smidgeon of hesitancy flickered in her otherwise staunch demeanor. "Don't be so cocksure, Jedi." Extra iron suffused her voice. "Tell me the stakes and let me decide for myself."

"If I do that I will be turning against not only my creed but the—"

"Your creed? Your _creed_?" she snapped before he could finish, furiously gesticulating with a hand. "Where was your precious creed when you conjured up three different consecutive identities in order to trick me into falling for your ruse?" Her chains clattered noisily against the white durasteel table, and Kenobi saw the swollen, reddened marks upon her wrists where the cuff edges had scraped into her skin. Somewhere deep inside of him, something gave a little lurch.

"Lena, for your sake, tell me the name of the Imperial planet. If you don't, you'll just be prolonging your own misery and prolonging the inevitable war. Sooner or later, there _will_ be a war between the Rebellion and the Empire, and eventually, the Empire _will_ fall. I can sense it through the Force."

She smirked at that; he ignored it. "Lena, if there must be a war, then I want it fought now."

"An odd thing to say for someone who lives for peace," she remarked deridingly. "If I tell you Palpatine's location, and your Rebellion wins the war tomorrow, what will the victory get you? Revenge? But you're not allowed to savor it. Power? But you don't want it. Wealth? You don't seem interested in that, either."

"Unity," Kenobi replied, and was surprised to feel that he meant it. "When the war's over, a new Republic will spring up, and that blasted divide between the Rebel Alliance and the Empire will be torn down. But the more we prolong the onset of war, the longer this invisible wall will stand. Why – why, Lena? Why does this have to go on?" He knew he was fumbling out words like an impassioned child, but somehow he couldn't stop. "Right now we have a chance to end it. End the political factions splitting up things that aren't… that aren't meant to be split apart."

She was smiling at him with an undertone that he couldn't quite recognize. "I wonder what you truly mean by what you said," she murmured. "What separated things are you referring to, Obi-Wan Kenobi? Or… who?" She sat back satisfactorily, the question lingering uncomfortably in the air between them.

He was a Jedi. A _Jedi_. A Jedi knew no emotion…

Kenobi clambered for what little reserve was left in his mind, caught it, held on tight. What he said had merely been sentimental political drivel; Qui-Gon would have slaughtered him for the reckless way he had let his mouth run loose. "You act as though you've forgotten that I'm a Jedi," he said, evenly. "If it comes to it, Lena, I can make you tell me the location of the primary Imperial base by simply willing it."

"Don't patronize me. If you want to do your mind control, then do it now."

"I have my morals," he responded tightly. "At this point, Lena, I'm trying to give you options. Don't you realize that if you give out this information, you'll be rid of all this mess? Continue fighting for the Emperor if you want. Deflect to the Alliance. Go cut off your insignia and fly to the Outer Rims—"

"I get your point."

He swallowed. "Be reasonable, Lena."

"Hm… reason." Not leaving his gaze, Lena ran a moist tongue over her mouth and bit her lower lip. "You know… I'll tell you several things that have escaped _your_ line of reasoning, Obi-Wan." She lifted herself to a standing position, her chair grating against the duracrete floor before falling with a clatter into a corner. Then she reached out as far as the chains would allow, grabbed the front of his tunic, and pulled him around the table until Kenobi could feel her hot breath wafting rhythmically onto the hollow of his throat.

He stepped backward – no, she was pushing him with the heated pressure of her body – until his shoulder-blades met resistance with the icy wall. Both of their heartbeats drummed like frantic birds' wings beating against either side of his ribs.

She had done this type of coercion before, Kenobi realized, hazily. Pressed into him until nothing separated them but the fabric of their clothes and nothing filled his being except the overwhelming sense of her proximity. Only she didn't remember, and he did. All too well, for it had come to him in his nightmares and sweat-drenched visions, and other dreams that were frightening for an altogether different reason…

An alarm blared in the distance, matching the alarms blaring through his mind; Kenobi's eyes darted to the ceiling where the tiny red light of a surveillance camera blinked ominously.

"You have less than twenty seconds to tell me," he whispered, closing his eyes. The overlapping footsteps of guards were already echoing down the hall.

"Well… Jedi." The whisper-light touch of her lips upon the corner of his mouth… or was that a brush of her fingertips? "Your Ithorian friend has had the pleasure of informing me yesterday that you were the last of your kind." The wisp of a kiss at the base of his ear so soft it could have been but a breath. "Am I correct?"

"Yes."

"You're hiding from the Empire; Palpatine won't rest until every single Jedi is dead and turned into interstellar debris. And I'm an Imperial, Obi-Wan. And I know what you are…"

Oh, Maker.

He understood.

His eyes snapped open just as three guards rammed down the door with an earsplitting crash of durasteel against durasteel.

Lena pedaled away from him, cold air swirling into the void where she had stood. She was staring at him with brimming, glistening eyes that were threatening to spill over. "Get it, Obi-Wan?" She laughed without humor. The guards were wrenching her unresisting arms behind her, binding them together with emergency cable. "By telling me what you are, that clever Chig Nugla just issued me the death sentence."

A guard had come to his side and urgently voiced some concern; Kenobi answered accordingly without hearing or caring. There was no one else in the room but Lena, nothing he heard but the simple truth that she had spelled out for him, repeating over and over like a malfunctioning holo-record.

"It doesn't matter if I give you the Imperial planet's location or not, Obi-Wan," she yelled to him as the guards detached the chains from her wrists. The pulled her toward the direction of the door; she resisted. "As long as your secret needs to be kept from the galaxy, they'll keep me rotting here at the mercy of this base. Obi-Wan, this thing has gone beyond the damn war. It's—" She stumbled forward through the door, unable to hold her slender ground against the three heavy-set guards. She called as she was dragged from view, "Tomorrow, Obi-Wan, you can tell me all your romantic stories about how you'll set me free the moment I give you the planet's location. And they'll be just that – stories."

And she was gone.

A suspended minute dragged past, or it could have been two, or ten. The spell was broken when from the open doorway ducked the massive, tan figure of Secretary Chig Nugla. He moved with surprising grace for an Ithorian of his size, striding softly to the small desk and leaning his hip lightly against it.

Smugness practically reeked from his every pore, Kenobi sensed with a startlingly intense stab of distaste. He kept it down; offered Nugla a civil nod. "Secretary."

"I was watching it all from the surveillance camera," the Ithorian replied by way of greeting.

What a surprise. Kenobi willed the serene expression upon his face to remain that way. "And your thoughts?"

"It was, unfortunately, a truncated session, and I hope you're all right from that attack. But I must commend you, General Kenobi, on your… how should I put it… _unique_ style of interrogation. She talked, all right."

If Kenobi had any more knowledge of Ithorian physiognomy, he would have sworn that the double-mouths were each perked into a satisfied smile. He decided to give the secretary what he wanted to hear. "I have to admit, it didn't quite work out as I had planned. She talked, but we didn't gain any ground. Your tougher tactic may prove to be the more effective in the long run. I'm puzzled as to why Senator Organa didn't continue appointing you—"

Nugla clucked his tongues. "No, no, no. No need to be modest. The job is for you. You're very convincing at it, you know."

"Oh? How so?"

"You're gaining her trust." He moved from the desk, tucked his large, hoof-like hands into the vast pockets of his robe. "Who knows? A week later, and some might actually start believing that you are her friend. Or lover." Then he left without a backward glance.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

To be continued… I'll be traveling the next two months, so updates might come slowly. We'll see. Thanks to all you readers and reviewers. Keep 'em rolling in.


	6. The Ocean And The Wall

THE QUARRY

By: Scatterheart a.k.a. Hallospacegirl

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

CHAPTER SIX: THE OCEAN AND THE WALL

The following evening he placed a sheet of paper before her on the center of the tiny desk. "Try this," he said.

Lena took the paper and flipped it over several times, the chains upon her wrists jingling. She glanced up at him. "It's blank."

"I want you to write it down," Kenobi replied. "If you can't say the name of the Imperial planet, write it down."

She laughed then, a full and sincerely amused sound that saturated the whiteness of the tiny room into something warm and glowing and animated. And bitter as well, Kenobi detected as he stretched out with the Force. Carried on an undercurrent of hurt, like new fire crackling up from a bed of destruction and loss.

She was hiding something dark, but it was completely guarded from him now; the knowing look in her eyes revealed the mental barricade that she had set up against him, a barricade so murky he could not hope to break through. "Is this your idea of an interrogation joke?" she quipped after her laugher had died away. "If so, I admit it's quite funny."

"Anything to make the process easier."

"Always the gentleman. But I regret to tell you that the answer is no." With pale and slender fingers, she slowly ripped the paper down the center, then overlapped the severed pieces together and continued ripping until only a pile of ragged confetti remained on the tabletop. "Give up, Obi-Wan." Her voice was harder now, grave, while the same genial expression remained upon her face.

"I won't. A Jedi never gives up."

"Why?"

He gazed at her briefly as he considered the question, somehow recalling the night he had first met her – the sandstorm had raged like the apocalypse upon the Wastes, but they had stayed within the confines of the hovel and had chatted quietly for hours. Before the trouble with the comlink. Before the lies and the spaceships and the fighting, in which they had tried to tear at each other to shreds, both from the outside and from within…

The black security camera on the ceiling emitted a faint blip, and Kenobi realized that he was smiling. "I find it strange that you're not attempting to verbally murder me at the moment, Lena."

She returned the smile, her pleasant expression rearranging into something cryptic. "Your Rebellion friends gave me a lesson in manners this afternoon. I learned that the more I try to kill you, the more chances Chig Nugla will have to come and take your place. And besides…" The cryptic look deepened. "Maybe I _am_ trying to murder you and you just don't know it. Now, you didn't give me an answer to my original question."

"Why we never give up? We never abandon our causes because we never undertake tasks that we don't fully believe in. I believe in the purpose of the Rebel Alliance."

"And you believe in bringing down Emperor Palpatine?"

"It's necessary to sacrifice one evil individual for the good of all in the galaxy." He sensed that she was about to protest, and he held up a hand. "Lena, I don't say this as memorized propaganda. Listen to me when I tell you, once again, that we're holding more information about the current Imperial and galactic situation than you know—"

"Do you honestly believe that?" she interjected, leaning in. "What you just said about the necessity of sacrificing one for the good of all?"

Her eyes, though for some reason he could not divulge seemed oddly muted, nevertheless pierced into him blindingly. Or it could have been simply her words that were currently worming their way into his gut, dragging out churning sensations of doubt that he didn't know had existed within him before.

Kenobi shifted in the too cold chair. Smiled perfunctorily. "We're soldiers in a galactic war, Lena. I can't deny the truth that I've killed many. So have you."

Did the slightest flinch just cross her stoic features?

"But when you killed – you didn't think about how glorious it felt to end the life of a stranger," he continued, then added, "or did you? When you watched your enemies die, wasn't the bloodshed always for the greater good? Or at least that's what we tell ourselves when we feel the life seep from the slain around us. The excuse that we have to believe."

Blast, his logic was becoming undone. He heard it pulse eerily into his ears as it echoed in the amplification of the tiny room, and in a moment of – surprise? apprehension? fear? – he noticed the glimmering of moisture upon the pale pink rims of Lena's lower eyelids. The Force rippled in distress, like a wavering stone wall seconds before it crumbles under the pressure of the ocean behind it.

Kenobi was unsure if he was the ocean… or the wall.

"Well, Lena, to tell the truth it doesn't matter what we believe – it's all expendable ideology in the face of politics. We've already chosen to be what we are now, and we've already set permanent paths for ourselves. And turning against that would be like turning against…" He struggled to put into coherency the jumble of images and phrases and emotions – yes, emotions; perhaps just this once he would let himself go for a brief moment, for his own sake. Hadn't Bail Organa repeatedly reprimanded him for neglecting his self for the Jedi order? Even during the latter days of the war the senator had informed him of the negative consequences of suppressing emotion for what he deemed "a secular warrior philosophy, not a holy religion."

Kenobi realized his head had been pounding ever since he'd stepped into the room. He sucked in a breath of filtered, cool and stagnant air. He would let himself go for his sake. Oh, Maker… for Lena's sake.

The trembling pools in her eyes.

"Lena, we can't turn away from duty. What matters is that we have some… some peace of mind to hold onto when we're doing what we must, as warriors," he finished.

"What we must? What _we_ must? No, Obi-Wan, don't speak for me. This is your excuse, not mine," she snapped. The tears had spread their way to her thick lashes, and now threatened to fall. "Rescuing me from the sandstorm and then throwing me here to the rancors – is this your so-called duty? Was this a _must_? Does it feel _right_ to you, Jedi, that we're sitting across from each other in this room? I guess it doesn't matter, because – right or not – you can always tell yourself that it's just a Jedi duty. That's right, Obi-Wan, blame it on the duties of your Jedi order. It sucks out your feelings and gives you peace of mind."

The physical sting that suddenly pierced his heart didn't trigger a sense of retreat, as he had expected, but anger. Anger, and a peculiar ache in his chest that rivaled the pain from the worst battle wounds he had ever received.

"It confounds me how you can say these things without once applying them to yourself," he returned. "If you insist on abandoning your warrior duties for what you feel is right in your heart, then end all this and tell us Palpatine's location. Take your _duty_ to the Empire and toss it in its wretched face."

"Has it ever crossed your mind that I don't_ want_ to betray my Emperor?" Her voice was rising to match his. "I have loyalty and – and love, Obi-Wan! Loyalty. And _love._ But evidently those words don't mean anything to people like you—"

"Love for whom? For _Palpatine_? By the Maker, Lena, open your eyes—"

"He's done a lot more for me than you!"

Hell.

It registered to Kenobi that Lena was crying. She wasn't weeping audibly or even actively, but the tears were rebelliously tumbling down her face, streaking her skin, sliding along her jaw and trickling down her neck. And maybe she felt the same way as he did; that if she ignored them – that if _he_ ignored them – then perhaps those offending, obscene signals would disappear altogether…

He stretched out and managed to wipe away one warm, glistening orb from her flushed cheek before she swatted him away with as much strength as a boxer. The chain from her wrist whipped across the table and the paper confetti flew in a flurry of snow. "I _told_ you not to do that, Jedi!"

"You shed one more tear for the Emperor, and – may the Maker be my witness – you will end up shedding a whole lot more than that!"

"Are you threatening me?"

"After all that's said and done, it's _his_ threat to you, not mine!"

The last of the paper snowflake descended silently upon the floor. Then Lena said, "Explain what you mean."

"Lena – how can I put it – the Rebellion has information." _About your beloved, yet scheming parents, about their corrupted financial deal with Palpatine that will not only end their avaricious lives, but likely yours as well. _He bit his tongue, refrained from spilling the repellent details. "The leaders of this Rebel base have information about you and Palpatine that they will not hesitate to use against you. If you cooperate with me now, they'll be too busy organizing an Imperial offensive to care about it any longer, and I can sense that it'll simply be buried away once the new war begins. But if you keep doing what you're doing now – if you keep remaining silent, Lena – then the leaders of this base will have no choice but to vocalize the information to you in this interrogation chamber. Look up there." He nodded toward the small black rectangle in the upper back corner of the room, which blinked and beeped lightly in response. "It's a camera filming us as we speak, making records of our conversation available to every cadet or minor Rebellion officer on Alderaan. And once the information gets recorded onto that holo-camera, Lena, it'll be beyond our control who will see it, and who will spread it about the galaxy like wildfire. At that point, even if you decide to cooperate, that information will be beyond this base's control. Do you understand me?"

She was silent. A single tear hung shivering on her eyelash, shattering into a million droplets as she blinked; he thought he could almost hear it splash against her skin. "I can't trust you, Obi-Wan," she said, finally.

Kenobi sighed. "Lena, I understand." The words rolled off his tongue reflexively, but he admitted with a vague pang that he had meant them, and – inexplicably – thought to the Imperial comlink sewed safely into the cloth of his inner tunic. "But realistically speaking, your options are slim at the moment. You can trust either me or Nugla. The choice is yours."

A humorless smirk touched her moist lips. "Well, if you spell it out for me so eloquently… "

"Tell me the location, Lena."

The smirk died. "Sorry, Jedi. The answer's still no."

Maker, he wanted to – he wanted to – Kenobi clenched his hands beneath the table until he felt the crescents of his nails dig hotly into his palm. Even crying and trapped in shackles she could still stand firm. Unrelenting…

"Lena… _please_."

"I appreciate your effort, but no."

"Don't tell me you care nothing about what I've just told you—"

She shook her head, cropped black hair rustling. "No information you have about me can possibly make me give in, Obi-Wan, because I have nothing to lose."

Deep down, something snapped. "For the Maker's sake, it's not all about _you_!" he roared at her with as much uncontrolled fury as he had on the banks of the molten rivers of Mustafar, so, so long ago.

Lena blinked, once. She didn't move, but the Force surrounding her rippled in shock at his outburst, like the waves of a pond after a rock has been wildly hurled in. She began, "I didn't—"

"Blast you, Lena! The consequences of your actions don't end a centimeter before your eyes – they extend to people that you love, and people who love you! Can't you understand that I'm trying to help you? I'm trying to convince you to make the decision that won't burn up everyone else into cannon fodder! Damn it, have some sense of responsibility!" An essence black and elemental licked into the furthest boundaries of his Force sensitivity, and Kenobi instinctively heaved a breath, pulled himself back from the forbidden brink as soon as the darkness flickered into his mind.

He supposed he should have felt frightened at that uncomfortable brush with the Dark Side, but fear would have only dragged him deeper into the abyss; Qui-Gon's training had staunchly prepared him for these rare, yet inevitable moments in a Jedi's life. He distantly wondered through his burning frustration whether even Yoda had experienced times like these, times when he yearned to release those decades of training like birds from a cage and simply fly out with talons extended—

No. An icy shiver had broken out across his forehead; Kenobi sprinted into the safer territories of his mind. That little foray had been unacceptable. For a Jedi, inexcusable. Never again. _Never again_…

Lena was chuckling through her tears, the Force tumbling from her in rivers of sadness and bitter amusement. "You speak as though you know everything about love, Jedi," she said.

"I live," Kenobi replied, and found that his voice could only manage out a rasp. "I know."

"Well, do you know anything of hate, then? You can't have one without the other. Your Jedi cult forbids hatred. So how can you use the word 'love' and have it mean something more than just a word scrolling across a holoscreen?"

Lena… Anakin. And quite suddenly Kenobi remembered his former apprentice, standing aboard the piece of floating debris as the Mustafarian lava flowed between them. He had warned him not to jump – he had possessed the higher ground, and he had brandished his blue-beamed lightsaber in warning.

How many times had he fantasized that he had held out a hand instead? In these dreams he would deactivate the lightsaber and offer his hand, and Anakin would reach and grab that lifeline, and they would weather their way atop the crumbling mountain to where Padmé and the twins and the ship awaited. Then Padmé would awake, and see that out through the fire walked not one, but _two_ people. Both of them saved.

"Larmé Sarena," Kenobi said, "I want you to know that years ago I lost someone very dear to me, infinitely more dear than a student or a friend or a son. As I watched him die before me, I told him I loved him, but that word – love – I don't think it can ever fully describe what I felt toward him as he lay there dying. And then… and then he stretched his burning, dying fingers toward me, and he spat out his last words at me, 'I hate you.' Do you know what that felt like, Lena?" Kenobi slid his arm across the cold, white tabletop, palm facing upward. "Would you like to know?"

Her pale, chain-scarred throat tensed in a swallow. Her wet eyes traveled down to his open-palmed invitation, and up to meet his gaze, and as her pupils burned steadily into him like a living embodiment of Mustafar, she placed one cool, dry hand in his.

And cried out.

Kenobi immersed himself in the sensation of his mind flowing into her, of her mind receiving those fiery memories and mirroring them back, then back again and again in an infinite loop. His palm felt scorched, agonized, and he clasped her cool hand tightly, his knuckles whitening with the effort.

She was sobbing now, staring at him and almost absentmindedly wiping the tears away with the back of her other wrist. "But how – how could – how—"

Kenobi sensed her grief – _his_ grief? – seeping into her devastating eyes and threatening to suffuse her. Now she was crouched over the table, reacting to an old pain that was not hers, and their faces were almost touching…

In a moment of clarity, he realized in alarm that he was actually hurting her. He had wished this simply to be a small demonstration – of what, really? His ability to feel? His ability to keep a calm serenity on the outside while the force of his memories clawed at his insides? But, Maker, whatever he was trying to prove, he was _hurting _her.

Kenobi tried to wrench his hand from out of her steely grip. "That's enough. I didn't know that—"

"No, I want to know mor—"

"Enough!" He snatched his hand away. But not before he could sense that odd, dark entity within her, that little secret whose presence she had so effectively hidden from him when he had first walked in this evening.

Kenobi recovered from his daze. "Lena, you're hiding something from me. Something happened to you today."

"_What_?" She jerked back into her seat. Anger and fear filled the room until he could almost see the choking black cloud. "What were you trying to do?" she snarled like a wounded animal. "Was this your way of reading my mind? Get out of here. You deserve every pinch of what you got. Get out of here!"

The cloud grew – he could barely detect her through the Force, and he could only extend his arms, take her shoulders and attempt to pull her closer. "Why are you hiding from me? What is it that I can't know?"

"Leave me alone!" She tore herself free and slapped him. The cuff of the chain sliced across his injured temple, reopened the wound, and warm liquid seeped out as tinny alarms blared in the distance.

Kenobi looked up at the security camera; it was shrieking in warning, red lights flashing. He smiled through the agonizing pain, ruefully. "So now you have the power to send me away. Convenient."

She didn't look at him.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

Leia Organa peered out from her hiding place behind the hallway pillar, and watched the strange man called Obi-Wan Kenobi being ushered into the medical clinic by two guards and a hovering medi-droid. She wrinkled her nose in distaste as she noticed the ugly cut on the side of his head. Blood practically gushed out from it, sliding down his face and dribbling all over his white shirt. That cut was worse than anything she had ever received, but he wasn't crying or screaming in pain. In fact, he was acting as though it didn't even exist, and he even smiled at the doctor when he entered the transparent, duraglass-walled clinic.

Leia cringed again. Grownups. Maybe when she grew up she would go off on secret adventures like Obi-Wan as well, and get hurt, but still act like nothing had happened. And maybe she wouldn't have to sneak around the silver palace in the middle of the night anymore, because all grownups stayed up late and never got punished when they were caught.

"Miss Leia, what in the name of space are you doing awake?"

She pouted at the prissy voice behind her. For some reason she couldn't explain, she had felt he would come find her, sooner or later. It was as if her droid C-5MO had eyes on the back of his shiny bronze head, and all of them were capable of X-ray vision. She wheeled around and placed a finger over her mouth. "Be quiet. You're gonna get me caught, Emmo."

The droid huffed electronically. "Well, that is the point of my finding you, Miss Leia. It is two standard hours after midnight, and a young girl like yourself should be sleeping in your room instead of prowling around the headquarters like a nocturnal creature. I have a mind to tell your mother and father…"

He rattled on and on, but Leia had already turned her attention back to the proceedings inside the clinic. Obi-Wan was now sitting on a chair, and the doctor was walking toward him with a tray of little items. Then the doctor took out something from the tray, and—

Leia gasped, rapping on one of Emmo's metallic legs. "Emmo – look!"

"…and you'll be punished for certain. What is it now?"

"The doctor's hurting Obi-Wan with a needle," she said softly. "Obi-Wan's my friend. We gotta save him! C'mon!"

C-5MO emitted a stiff kind of sound that Leia recognized to be droid laughter. "Miss Leia," he explained when she frowned at his reaction in unhappy puzzlement, "the doctor is _helping_ Master Kenobi, not hurting him. It seems that Master Kenobi has sustained a rather large cut upon his temple, and the doctor is using the needle to sew the wound together."

"But why? Needles hurt."

"Yes, my memory banks inform me that by human standards, a puncture to the skin with a needle indeed causes sharp pain," the droid agreed, sounding a little sympathetic. "However," he chirped again, brightening, "stitches are required to keep Master Kenobi's wound from healing with the unsightly appearance of permanent scars. Don't worry, Miss Leia, the doctor will apply a generous dose of bacta-salve to your friend's wound after he finishes sewing it together, and Master Kenobi will be perfectly healthy in very little time."

Leia frowned, squinting as the doctor now led Obi-Wan to a far corner of the clinic and stuck a white, gooey bandage over his cut. Then they shook hands; Leia rapped on C-5MO's leg again. "Is it over? Did the doctor make Obi-Wan all good?"

"Not yet, Miss Leia. My protocol programming tells me that bacta-salve will heal an abrasion in approximately a standard day."

"But that's a long, long, long time…" And especially to a man like Obi-Wan who could get injured in a place as safe as the Rebel headquarters, Leia thought. What really happened to him anyway? Did he run into a tree? Did he fall down the steps? How strange that this could happen to him, since a herd of servant droids and protocol droids usually followed every important grownup in this palace… and Obi-Wan was definitely an important man. From her secret hideaway in her playroom, she had seen his arrival in that odd spaceship, and she had seen the massive crowd that had gathered outside to welcome him. Definitely an important man. And he didn't even own one droid to help him.

Suddenly, an idea struck her head, an idea so brilliant she giggled out loud. The sound echoed in the deserted hallway, and she clasped a hand to her mouth. Obi-Wan, who was currently chatting and walking out the door with the doctor, stopped in his tracks and jerked his head toward the pillar.

Leia scuttled back into the shadows. He hadn't seen her – she could _sense_ it, and her feelings, even though she couldn't understand them, were always right.

"Miss L—" Emmo began; Leia glared at him to shut up.

It was only after she heard the two men start talking again that she motioned for the droid to come closer.

"I know how to help him," she whispered to C-5MO as he knelt in front of her, his knees squeaking lightly. "Wanna hear my plan?"

C-5MO groaned. "I have a bad feeling—"

"Don't be like Daddy! He never lis'ens! Just lis'en!"

"Very well then, Miss Leia. What is your brilliant plan?"

She cupped a hand to Emmo's ears, even though her mother had once told her that C-5MO could hear from all parts of his body because he was a droid. "You don't need to help me now," she whispered. "You go help Obi-Wan."

The droid hopped back a little, looking very shocked for an expressionless machine. "Whatever do you mean?"

"You're my droid, right? I got you for my birthday. So I'll give you to him. Just temp'rar'ly though. When he's all good you can come back."

"But – but!" Emmo shook his head furiously, neck gears squealing. "Miss Leia, you absolutely cannot do such a thing! Giving me away to Master Kenobi like a sacrificial offering? Why, that is preposterous! I am programmed to serve only you, and – in any case – your parents will surely disapprove of my letting you alone, if even for a mere several days. Say…" His round eyes dimmed briefly on the tops and bottoms, like the way grownups narrowed their eyes at her whenever she did something naughty. "This idea must be a clever ruse to rid yourself of me while you traipse off on your tomboy adventures—"

She sighed theatrically, rubbing the sides of her nose with two fingers. "Oh, Emmo. I'm being good to a friend. I'm not – I'm not per… perpos'rous."

"The word is 'preposterous,' Miss Leia, and it means that you will never convince me to deliver myself to Master Kenobi like a gutless, disloyal hunk of jun—"

"You don't like me," Leia declared as sadly as possible. She knew it wasn't true; because C-5MO was her droid, he had been coded to like her no matter what. But since he probably wasn't aware of the programming done to him, he always seemed very surprised whenever she used the trick, and always tried his best to show her that he _did_ like her, very much.

Tonight was no different. Emmo huffed, indignant, and sputtered, "Miss Leia, of course I like you. That is why I want to serve _you_ instead of Master Kenobi."

"But he's my friend and he doesn't have a droid! He needs per'tection! He's hurt! Just a day, Emmo, please, please, please, please…"

Leia could almost hear the parts in C-5MO's brain – or whatever it was that droids had – clunking in thought. Then after a prolonged moment… "Oh… oh, all right, Miss Leia, I will do as you say. But this does _not_ mean I have given you free reign around the headquarters, mind you. You will still have to follow all rules and regulations that your parents and I have established for you, including punctual meals and b—"

"You're the best droid ever, Emmo!" she exclaimed under her breath, not waiting to hear the droid's familiar speech one more time. From the corner of her eye, she noticed that Obi-Wan had bowed to the doctor in a goodbye, and was now walking away down an opposite hall. "Oh no, he's going. Emmo, go!"

"What – _now_, Miss Leia?"

"Yeah! He's gonna fall in the dark."

C-5MO stood hesitantly, and waddled a few steps toward Obi-Wan's fast disappearing figure before looking back. "You do realize, Miss Leia, that I am your droid, and that I am only undertaking this task to humor you, my master?"

She didn't really know what that meant, so she nodded, enthusiastically.

"Go to bed!" Emmo continued.

"But…"

"Now, or I shall promptly inform your parents."

As she tiptoed from the base of the pillar, she could just barely see C-5MO catch up to that strange Obi-Wan Kenobi, and she couldn't help grinning to herself. Something told her that he needed all the help he could get, and that she had just done him a marvelous favor.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

In one of the rarer moments of Obi-Wan Kenobi's life, he sensed the Force presence of the droid _after_ he heard it approaching from behind him. The sounds of its footsteps, mercilessly clattering in the amplification of the twilight hallway, brought him to a halt, and he twisted around to see a bronze, newer model protocol droid hobbling to him with a bent arm raised in greeting.

"Master Kenobi! Master Kenobi, sir!" it hailed in its impeccable speech when it stopped before him, gears crunching. "C-5MO at your service, sir."

The license code struck Kenobi as familiar, and he searched his memory swiftly. Was it one or two days ago that he had heard it before?

Of course. "You're Leia Organa's droid, C-5MO," he said, attempting a smile that came out as a grimace. Though the wound on his temple was swathed in a bandage of cooling bacta-salve, it still stung whenever he moved his face. And then there was that – _meeting_, if one could call it by such a term – between him and Lena; it had occurred an entire hour ago, but its residue still clung to him as tightly as ever, matting his back in perspiration, obscuring his mind.

Kenobi pressed the bandage tighter to his wound. "I didn't request a droid to be 'at my service,' C-5MO," he continued, jovially. Perhaps if he feigned normality, everything would settle back into the way they were supposed to be. "Especially not at this hour."

The droid was silent for a moment as its circuitry computed the necessary details. Then it said, "I was summoned here to be of use to you, sir."

He noted the peculiar phrasing of the droid's words – _I _was summoned here – a subtle and clever way of avoiding mention of the summoner's name. Then again, he realized with an inward smile, it was unlikely the summoner could be anyone else other than Leia Organa, the Skywalker child. It was obvious now that the familiar presence he had felt while he had been inside the clinic belonged to her. She must have seen his distress and wanted to help him.

Well, at almost three standard hours after midnight, she was a mischievous child. Mischievous, with a heart of gold, like Anakin had been, so many years ago before his death and decay…

"If you were summoned here," Kenobi remarked, "then I suppose it would be rude of me to turn you away, C-5MO. Can you walk with me to my quarters? It's in the Far East Wing, and I think I might lose my way in the dark."

"Am I correct that you asked me for directions, sir?" The protocol droid drew himself up to his full height. "Why, certainly, sir, by all means. I have been designed to provide accurate navigation guidance for more than three hundred thousand developed planets in the Inner Rims, and over forty thousand planets in the Outer. It would be my deepest pleasure to guide you, Master Kenobi."

He gave the droid a polite nod, and made a mental note to consult the droid's speech programmer about the importance of _brevity._ "Very well, Emmo. Lead the way."

"Certainly."

They ambled on in the dimly lit halls, the twin lights from C-5MO's visual sensors providing illumination of elegantly carved pillars and smoothly polished walkways. The designs almost reminded Kenobi of the conference rooms that existed so, so long ago, before the regime change wiped the galaxy into an austere slate of black and Imperial gray. But of course, there were differences. The lack of lighting, for one, spoke only too clearly of the lack of energy – why waste power on light orbs for the scattered late-night prowlers when it could go toward maintaining the army for several days more?

A high-pitched beeping cut through the easy quiet; it belonged to C-5MO, who jumped clumsily in surprise. "Oh! Dear me, I'm sorry, sir. It seems my battery is running low, and I must go to the station to charge. Unfortunately, since the station is located in the West Wing basement, I will need to leave you for now. Many apologies, sir."

"Don't apologize, Emmo. If it must be done, it must be done."

"Thank you, sir. I wholeheartedly agree, sir," it said, almost to itself, as it toddled off. "Only a protocol droid such as I cannot help wishing that the charging station were placed somewhere else, somewhere far from the dreadful mech-droids and mountains of surveillance discs that occupy that infernal basement. After all, I'm—"

Kenobi darted after the droid and grabbed it by its shiny bronze shoulder. Something it had said… "Mech-droids, Emmo? I assume that they're working in some kind of manufacturing or repair room?"

"Oh, yes, sir. A small portion of the basement holds records of the security cameras around the base, but almost everywhere else is dedicated to the upkeep of the Alliance headquarters. Mainly the rooms focus on the repairing of droids, communication devices, and computers, as those things malfunction the most frequently. Not protocol units, of course – the chance of our malfunctioning is three million, five hundred thousand and two, against. We only use it for the charging station."

He fell into step beside the droid. "Then if you don't mind, I'd like to visit the basement with you."

C-5MO frowned, a rearranging of the circular lights in its optical sensors. "Now? Dear me. Only mech-droids are active at this hour, Master Kenobi, because all the higher life-forms that work at the station are asleep. And I must tell you that these droids are mute, brutish beings, hardly worthy of your visit."

"Oh, is that right?" He grinned at this. "No worries, Emmo, I think I can manage without those higher life-forms."

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

When they arrived at the basement repair room, C-5MO plugged itself into the nearest charging station, which was located beside a monstrously cluttered communications desk. Two mech-droids were squealing about the table, assembling what seemed to be transmitter crystals for holo-projectors – Emmo impatiently uttered something in an electronic language, and they rolled away to the left side of the room and deactivated.

"Uncivilized machines," C-5MO said, reverting to Basic for the Jedi master to understand. "Now if you'll excuse me, sir, I shall only be an hour."

Kenobi gave a cursory scan of the room. Several large desks, all erupting with spare parts and equipment. Light orbs glowed from three corners of the low ceiling; affixed to the fourth corner was a surveillance camera that blinked mutely down. The only sound came from the gentle hum of the air purifier.

Still, he had to be sure. Those rusty mech-droids that Emmo had deactivated had blended so seamlessly into the mess that it had taken him a while to notice them. "Are there any more mech-droids in this room?" he asked the protocol unit. "I'd like to look around this place, but mech-droids don't appeal to me in the least. As you said, they're beastly things."

"Very true! Very true! My sensors tell me there are four more working at the—"

"Can you deactivate them like you did the others?"

"Oh, yes, immediately, Master Kenobi."

As the four mech-droids rolled out from behind the desks, he gestured to the far corner. "Please send them there, Emmo. It will be less crowded if they're put over there."

"Of course." Another series of electronic commands, and the droids reversed direction to line up against the corner.

Kenobi smiled as the last mech-droid crunched into place. Squarely in front of the black, crane-necked surveillance camera, like bodyguards protecting a royal family. He could hear the desperate whirs of the rotating camera lens behind the four hunks of metal as it angled itself uselessly for a view of the room.

A crafty tactic learnt from the reckless days at the Academy, he thought in amusement. Qui-Gon would have frowned at this trick, chastised him briefly, but he would have done so with a twinkle in those tired, emerald eyes. _Political laws never rose above the eternal will of the Force._ He had said this many times. Just a mantra from a forgotten era…

Kenobi folded up the heavy bottom edge of his tunic and plucked apart the seam with his nail. The Imperial comlink tumbled from the fabric and rolled silently into his hand like a cool, silver pellet.

He held it up to the protocol droid. "Do you know what this is?"

C-5MO gasped electronically. "Why, bless my motors, how in space did you acquire an authentic—"

"I'm glad you recognize it, Emmo," Kenobi replied. He had managed to block the camera visually, not audibly. "It's just a… souvenir. From my past. It's broken and I was wondering if you could fix it." He paused, feigning nonchalance. "Then again, it's not a very important object to me, and the damage to the interior _is_ extensive. If you're unable to do the task, Emmo, I would gladly toss it away. After all, you're a protocol droid, not a mec—"

"Nonsense," C-5MO exclaimed. Then, as an afterthought: "With all due respect, sir, rapid emergency repair is one of my exclusive specialties."

So droids of superior intelligence _could_ fall victim to reverse persuasion as well, he mused. Kenobi dropped the comlink into its upturned bronze palm. "Then please, Emmo, demonstrate the rapidity of your emergency repair skills. I'll be researching in the surveillance disc library while you work on this, and when I return in an hour, I trust that you'll be charged and finished."

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

Obi-Wan Kenobi left the droid after he had issued from it a pledge of secrecy, then followed the rusty basement hall to a double-paneled door, several meters away. He glanced at the "keep-out" sign in front of him admitting entrance for authorized personnel only, and pushed his way into the dusky surveillance library.

Bail would not have minded the slight indiscretion. Bail, who let him take virtually full control of the Imperial situation, would surely lend him one further step…

He settled down at the tiny table in front of the towering green super-computer, pockmarked with surveillance tapes like a great exotic cheese, and called the machine to life. A miniature hologram warbled hazily before him.

"Run today's video of Larmé Sarena Narona's containment cell, computer."

"This video is not available for public viewing," the computer replied in a liquid, feminine voice. "Type in your pass-code on the keyboard below."

_Pass-code?_

He frowned, his confusion echoed by the dull pain at his temple. Who had declared only several days ago that all videos were available for public viewing?

Chig Nugla.

Kenobi's stomach tensed in an unexplainable Force panic at the thought of the secretary's name. Surely, between his double mouths, his multilayered Ithorian brain was masking some crucial detail, some tiny loophole that could flip the meaning of everything that the Jedi had learned…

"Computer, Secretary Chig Nugla informs me that all surveillance tapes can be seen by the public. Please clarify that statement."

The hologram flickered for a brief moment. Then, "Secretary Nugla means that all interrogation tapes can be made public. Containment cell tapes cannot be seen except for first-tier officers. Type in your pass-code on the keyb—"

"Blast your pass-code."

He reached up with unsteady fingers and grabbed the communication wires from the face of the super-computer and ripped them out. The Force was practically tearing itself apart in a wordless, dissonant chant that something was wrong… something was horribly, terribly wrong…

He re-organized a spray of wires, stripping off the multicolored plastic coverings with his nails and twisting the silver, naked strands into new connections. Then he shuffled the wires back into place.

Undoubtedly some green cadet on his sleepy night shift was now being startled awake to capture him after this blatant display of vandalism – Kenobi was certain there were alarms attached to every last bolt of the computer – which left him five standard minutes alone. At the most.

"Computer, bring up today's video for Larmé Sarena Narona's containment cell."

"Affirmative. Video starting shortly."

The hologram wavered and gradually fell into shape.

A minute later, through the overwhelming rush of blood in his ears, Obi-Wan Kenobi heard the door click open and saw the slim, bronze shape of C-5MO enter the room. The droid was chirping something incomprehensible in Basic about making the repairs in record time; it stepped closer, and a pristine silver pellet plopped lightly into Kenobi's palm.

It was _shivering_. Kenobi looked at the repaired comlink, feeling oddly calm as though it were a tiny water droplet from a planet in another galaxy, and he was watching it from behind the glass of a high-powered telescope. No, the comlink wasn't moving– _he_ was shivering. The Force itself was trembling like speakers turned up at maximum volume, emanating from the hologram and searing through his eyes and through his bones and chilling him until he was numb.

He clenched his hand around the comlink and let his gaze travel back to the running holo-vid. The greenish, snowy shapes playing out a grotesque pantomime that he could not bear to admit…

Oh, Maker… something was wrong, indeed.

_Everything _was wrong.

_How could you hide this from me, Lena?_

Kenobi closed his eyes tightly. He thought of Anakin Skywalker, and felt himself change.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

To be continued. I'm back from my travels, so expect more updates. Thanks for reading and reviewing. It gets darker from here on in.


	7. One Last Betrayal

THE QUARRY

By: Scatterheart a.k.a. Hallospacegirl

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

CHAPTER SEVEN: ONE LAST BETRAYAL

Obi-Wan Kenobi? But it couldn't be. Not this Jedi master, this last remaining member of the mythical species of galactic beings known as the Jedi Order. Had it been but five years since the scourge? Five years ago, he would have passed a Jedi on the road with hardly a glance back, but ever since Kenobi had arrived onto the base, he could have barely taken his eyes off of him. Obi-Wan Kenobi. A Jedi. A shadow from a forgotten time.

Kenobi must have been a demigod to have been able to survive the war. Or at least that was what Chig Nugla had initially thought as the man had stepped from the faux Imperial ship, testing the Alderaanian air with a half-smile upon his smooth and serene and suntanned face. Here was a man who could shake the sand from his retirement and carry through a galactic operation without even a flinch in those catlike, graceful limbs. What could he be but a demigod? Or at least a ghost?

The illusion had dissipated almost immediately in Nugla's mind, of course. The abrupt faint onto the dirt walkway and the days of ragged interrogation had told him that. But really, what had he expected Obi-Wan Kenobi to do? Glow? Heal the sick and walk on water? Deep within his mind, Nugla knew that Kenobi was simply a human who had undergone special training, and it left a bitter taste in his mouths to admit that he had idolized this man for a suspended second. And then came the urge to break him down, to prove to the entire jaded base – especially to that fawning Bail Organa – that Kenobi was just a single, fallible mortal who could do no more or less than any other soldier.

Still, as Nugla watched Obi-Wan Kenobi charge into the office, he couldn't help but feel a little disappointed. Disappointed and at the same time smugly satisfied at the specter before him, like a scientist who has finally disproved the theory of immortality.

So here he was, the Jedi and the oasis of hope for the entire Rebel Alliance. Except now he looked more like a walking inferno than a peaceful spring. The purplish, bruised wound upon his temple, hovering above an unshaven jaw. The rumpled white clothes splattered on the shoulder with dried blood. Nugla swallowed the smile-tinged grimace rising to his lips.

"Explain this, Secretary Nugla." The fatigue in his voice, now more pronounced than ever. Kenobi slapped a small black rectangle onto the desktop and slid it across the pearlescent stone until the rectangle stopped two centimeters before Nugla's edge of the desk.

It was a surveillance tape. He crossed his arms in front of him, leaned back in the specially cushioned Ithorian chair, and blinked at the man standing opposite him. Kenobi's blatant entrance would have been offensive on any other day, but the curiosity that had bloomed in Nugla's chest overrode all other inferior feelings. "Yes, _General _Kenobi?" Nugla failed to keep the sarcastic emphasis from escaping his mouths, then decided that the slip didn't matter. It was grandly irritating – even insulting – hailing Kenobi by that term, for how was _he_ still an officer, much less a general? A general who hadn't shown for service in half a decade, then immediately thrust onto a pedestal upon his arrival. He touched the tape with a stocky finger and swirled it slowly upon the desk. "Are we supposed to have a meeting today, General? I must have forgotten—"

"I came without an appointment. I'm fully aware that I broke protocol."

He smiled widely he finished divulging the entire web of connections surrounding the small tape, now dancing lazily as he juggled it over his hands. "That's not the only thing you broke. This morning a report came in that somebody had rewired the computer in the surveillance library and had stolen a tape. Could that someone have been… you?"

Kenobi jerked his head in a curt nod. "It was the will of the Force. Secretary Nugla—"

"The Force?" he repeated through a mouth, letting out a bark of laughter with the other. "The _law_ says that unauthorized entrance is a—"

"Secretary Nugla," Kenobi interrupted quietly.

And the ensuing stream of words died on Chig Nugla's tongues. It had been the tone of the Jedi's voice that had shut him so decisively up, that soft and emphasized enunciation of his name. It sounded like a durasteel sword slicing through transparent silk. Surely a Jedi mind trick…

He swallowed in the silence, felt his hearts accelerating in his chest, and decided not to speak.

"Do you expect me to apologize, Secretary Nugla?" the Jedi continued. "I won't. Not to individuals who serve no purpose but to hide the atrocities committed by their tainted laws."

"What are you getting at?"

"You tortured her."

Nugla stared. He saw the seriousness of the accusation reflected back in twin pools of blue. The shock of that simple sentence hit his vocal chords like a missile, and he finally managed a small, "I didn't."

"Yes, it happened, Secretary. Watch the tape and you'll see two cadets who work under your command use a torture-droid on Lena Narona for three and a half hours. They employed needles, nerve stimulants, and bright optic goggles. These were all devices that could leave no trace upon the victim. Even more ingenious of you was to schedule the torture at her containment cell, Secretary. You knew that only interrogations could be seen by the rest of the base, and that recordings of her containment cell were available only to top officers. What better way to keep the rest of Alderaan believing in your righteous rebellion?"

"I've told you – I didn't do it. This is the first time I've heard of such a ridiculous thing. I didn't issue the order."

"Yes, Secretary Nugla, you did!"

The shock that had seized Nugla's abdomen finally disintegrated to the ground; fury rushed to fill its place. He pushed himself from the chair and rose to his feet. Fully standing, he realized the human was incredibly small, perhaps but one and three-quarter meters in height. So small that he was able to easily crush him underfoot. Crush him now before he had the chance to entangle him with those poisonous Jedi words, tie him up and destroy him like the Imperials did his family…

Nugla squeezed his fists tightly under the desk, forcing out the blackened memories. "Obi-Wan Kenobi, I swear to you—" It felt agonizing to speak, but he plowed through the barbs in his gullet. "—by the graves of my children. I swear to you I did not issue the order."

"If not you, then who?"

"A dozen other members at this base could have done the same. They hold the same privileges as I hold. I know you suspect me because you despise me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, because I treat you like a human and not like a god. And I despise you because you refuse to believe that inside out, you're like every other weak little human in the galaxy. So you try to shoot me down this way. You _want_ to."

The Jedi took a long, inhaled breath. His expression remained bland – at least compared to the livid contortions that Nugla felt were creasing his own face – as his deep-set human eyes roamed over the Ithorian. "I don't despise you, Chig Nugla," he said at last. "I am a Jedi, and a Jedi knows no hatred."

Nugla snorted. What one failed to mention about the Jedi was that to top off their list of accomplishments they were marvelous liars as well. Kenobi's voice had been placid, but that conflicting undercurrent of loathing had remained despite his outer control. It was written all over his gaze, his posture, his all too human scent. "Thank you for the… warmhearted… statement, general." Nugla sunk back down into the seat and urged the ache of anger in his bones dissipate into the soft brown leather. "But _I'm_ not a Jedi and I don't have any similar sentiment in return. And now I must ask you to leave my office. I'm not the culprit you are looking for, and frankly, you're wasting my morning."

"Secretary Nugla…"

That deadly tone again. But this time he ignored the unwarranted shudder of fear in his gut. He opened his right fist, finding the surveillance tape mangled inside. Simply an accident borne out of rage. He flicked the broken tape across the desk to Kenobi. "I'm sorry about that. Please take it—"

Before he could finish, his back exploded in white, blinding pain.

How—?

Nugla realized that in the blink of an eye he had been thrown out of his chair and smashed against the wall behind him with so much power that the holo-photo hanging nearby had fallen to the floor. And now _something_ was pinning him agonizingly against the wall, something unseen…

It was that Jedi. Obi-Wan Kenobi, standing in his place behind the desk, a hand held out in a gesture that could only amount to witchcraft.

So was this the reason why both the Empire and Rebellion feared him? Because he could control situations with his mind? Move objects with a wave of his arm? _The Force. Just a parlor trick. _He attempted to remain calm.

"You destroyed the tape, Secretary Nugla," Kenobi said.

"You know it was an accident."

"No, it seems like you have just cleaned up the evidence against you."

He struggled in his invisible confines, despite the fact that he knew that a Force hold did not work in the same manner as a material one. "How many times must I tell you that I didn't issue the order? It's not my fault that this happened to her." He cleared his throat. "It's not my fault that you're in love with her."

There. He said it, though he wondered dimly to himself whyhe would even have fostered _suspicions_ regarding this issue. It had just seemed obvious to him – Kenobi's fervent protection of the Imperial girl, their intimate conversations – that it staggered him that nobody else had uttered a word. Perhaps humans could see no further of themselves or others than the length of their relatively flat faces. Or perhaps they were too busy reassuring themselves of the impossibility of such a thing; he was a Jedi who had survived unscathed from the war, so of course he was unable to fall in love, much less with an Imperial

_Or did he say this statement because he had been digging too far into his mind for ways of dragging Obi-Wan Kenobi off of his Jedi throne?_

He searched Kenobi's blank countenance. Saw nothing. He couldn't resist another jab. "General Kenobi – and I'm sure you've been told this before – but don't let your feelings get in the way of your judgment. You couldn't bear watching her get tortured, so you're putting the blame on me. I'm the outlet for your pain—"

The breath was knocked out of both mouths as he was brought forward and thrown back again. Chunks of duracrete and white paint now crumbled in a small avalanche at his toes. Stars danced in his vision; he gasped for air. "Does tormenting _me_ make you feel better? Yes? Then I suppose you now know what it's like to inflict hurt upon another. Upon Lena—"

"You know nothing!"

He coughed. It was difficult to breathe through the Force pressure enveloping his entire torso. "That's correct, Obi-Wan Kenobi. I know nothing. Absolutely nothing. _Because I didn't issue the order!_"

"Nugla—"

"He's right, Obi-Wan. Chig Nugla didn't issue the order. I did."

And the pressure abruptly faded from his body as he crumpled to the polished, wooden floor. As he his pupils lost their focus, he saw the blurry white shape of Obi-Wan Kenobi, and behind him the regal, purple-robed silhouette of Senator Bail Organa.

Nugla didn't know whether to cringe or sneer. He took the easy option and passed out instead.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

It was true. Obi-Wan Kenobi sensed it etched it every line, every plane of Bail Organa's familiar face, just as he had sensed the innocence in Chig Nugla's. He gazed down at the Ithorian, now crumpled in a senseless mountain at the base of the dented wall, his blocky, tan body shaking in quick inhales of air.

Maker, what had he done? Had he really been the one who had suspended the secretary against the wall, almost crushing his twin windpipes with the pressure? He forced himself not the think back to the red-black nebula that had clouded his mind, a nebula he had only known five years ago, when that burnt husk of a man had clawed up from the boiling lakes of Mustafar…

He was sotired. _So_ tired. He was wracked with a fatigue that he didn't know had existed before. Maybe he could follow the path of the Ithorian and collapse into an unconscious meditation for several days. Leave the Imperial dilemma, leave Lena behind. Dream once more of the simple and endless heat of Tattooine that had nearly succeeded in scorching away all of his memories, before _she_ had come along and set them afire anew…

Her memory ran ablaze in his thoughts like a blanket of flames, pulling at his heart with a sort of throbbing, weighty pain as he recalled the staticky images of the surveillance holo-vid.

And now Bail Organa, his old friend, standing beside him in lavish, senatorial robes.

Kenobi supposed he was angry at the senator. No, not angry – furious to an extent that the emotion anesthetized him and left him completely peaceful. Or was it more a feeling of pain than anger? Or both? He could no longer tell; his mind burned white hot, silent.

He breathed deeply and attempted to cool the insensible hum of pure emotion. A true Jedi would not have ever – _ever – _have come to this… so was he a Jedi? Still? After hurtling an innocent Ithorian to the wall in a fit of desperation? After these days and days of thinking of that girl Lena and now literally _aching_ for her at the very core of him, was he still a Jedi?

Perhaps the Order had already fallen into extinction. Fallen from the first day he had seen her pale, exquisite face…

And did it matter? What mattered now? Lena? But she was all right, really; he had seen her after the torture and they had talked and she had hidden the truth from his probing senses behind a will of iron… so why did she hide from him? Why did she care that he knew or not – did she not want him to hurt as he did now? And why should he care? _Why?_

"I had to, Obi-Wan."

The male voice startled him, like a crash in the night.

He pivoted unsteadily on his feet to the speaker – Bail Organa.

The senator's face was ashen and grave, and Kenobi supposed that he wanted to take him by the shoulders and shake him violently or perhaps backhand him across the jaw for his blasphemous order against Lena, but he remained motionless.

"When I saw from the first day that she wouldn't break – I just wanted to – I wanted to _end _it, you know?" Organa was saying. "So I issued the order. I thought she would relent, but she didn't." He sighed raggedly, running a hand through his hair. "Damnation, Obi-Wan, don't look at me like that! I had to try – I _had _to. If she told us the name of the Imperial planet, then this whole thing would be over. The Empire would fall and the Jedi would rise again, and my daughter would no longer have to spend her childhood on a military base with only a damned _protocol droid_ as a playmate. Do you understand me, Obi-Wan? Why I had to do what I did? Believe me, it was one of the most difficult decisions I had to make—"

Kenobi grabbed him by the front of the gilded lapels. The Force was screeching about him like a wild, discordant symphony, pulling back at his limbs, making him feel as though he were slugging through a slew of muddy, crimson water. But he held on. Stared into Organa's trembling brown gaze. "You _tortured _her."

"Yes, I know! I tortured her! I tortured her but I didn't _injure _her – you saw her for yourself yesterday. And it was done for the sake of the greater good. I'm a senator, Obi-Wan. I have to do what is right for the people at a crucial time like this, don't you understand? This is the way the galaxy functions, and I'm its public servant, nothing more."

"The galaxy doesn't function on breaches of morality!" Kenobi roughly let the senator go, stumbled back. The Force was screaming as it clawed at him, dragging him back from the dark and bloody cloud. His leg tripped over the arm of an oversized Ithorian chair and he ungracefully toppled into it, too exhausted to leave the soft, cool cushions. "The galaxy doesn't function on another's pain."

Organa smoothed his robe, pulling out the creases in the front. For the first time since he had known the senator, Kenobi sensed a dash of fear in Organa's aura. Fear for him, the Jedi, if he could still refer to himself by that honor.

_Maker, what was he becoming?_

He buried his face in his hands and was stunned to feel the hot moisture there. He was weeping… but he had not wept in so long that he had almost forgotten how. And yet it was true – he was weeping quietly, shedding tears for Lena and for Bail and for what he and the Rebellion had become… and what was to be. He could sense the premonition shimmering around him; he could practically smell the verge of change.

And he understood what he needed to do.

He wiped his wrist across his eyes and looked up at the senator. Different, truly different. Bail Organa had been slim and dashing and had worn crisp uniforms then… before the war. Now it seemed that the entire weight of Alderaan had rounded out his shoulders and abdomen, and had thinned his straggly black hair. Thrown him into these elaborate gowns and cloaks as though sheer extravagance alone would somehow bring the Rebellion into power.

And quite abruptly the memory of the last time he had seen Bail Organa glittered crystally in his mind. The angelic white interior of the Alliance spaceship and his old friend standing proud in a uniform of spotless gray; the tiny baby Leia Skywalker had cooed as she had nestled in his arms.

Kenobi felt himself smiling through the empty sense of loss, the promise of a new beginning. "It's all over now, Bail," he whispered. "I'm sorry."

"What – what are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about everything – everything that surrounds us. You know, Bail, the galaxy has changed, and it will never return to the way it was. And I never wanted to believe that, because I wanted with all my heart to believe in…" – he searched for words – "…in a cyclical nature. I wanted things to orbit back to the way they were. I was never a model Jedi, Bail – I loved Qui-Gon and Anakin with too much of me, and so I feared for their loss, and when they were forcibly taken for me, I kept hoping that one day they would return. I was foolish and wrong."

"Obi-Wan, _please_—"

"Do you realize that life moves in the same fashion as the Force? It's a flowing river. We never travel back to where we came. We're different now, you and I. We've changed. And this galaxy will one day change as well – the Empire _will_ fall, but the new republic or democracy that takes its place will never be _The _Republic again. The Old Republic. We can't force ourselves to pretend that we were the same people we once were, operating under the same government, the same status quo. I will always remember our friendship, Bail Organa."

The older man's shock rippled tremulously through the Force. Gasping silently, Organa fished for the edge of the stone desk and leaned upon it rigidly. "I'm not understanding what you're saying, my friend …"

"I don't belong here. And you know it, Bail. I can sense that you do."

Organa shook his head frantically. "Is this about Lena? If it is, then – damn it – I'm sorry! All right? I don't know what to do right now, Obi-Wan. I'll – I'll stop all interrogations for two weeks. I'll get Chig Nugla off the case. Obi-Wan, I don't know what else to tell you – I'm _sorry_."

Kenobi closed his eyes. Dared not to open them lest a new torrent of tears would come rolling down. "I can't stay. I belong on Tattooine, guarding over your daughter's twin brother."

"But I _need_ you here. Obi-Wan, you are the shining star of the Rebel movement – don't you see? _We_ need you, and if—"

"Perhaps one day you'll need me, but now is not the time."

"Why not! Why can't it be!"

The rueful smile crept back onto his lips. "I don't know. I simply sense it. I suppose we can call it… fate, my old friend."

A silence lapsed between them, marred only by the steady breaths of the Ithorian nearby. He ruminated over the recollections gathered during the last few days – the sweet Alderaanian air, the grubby softness of Leia's fingers as they shook hands – and tucked them away into the valuable pockets of his mind.

And then… there was the unspoken mission ahead of him.

Kenobi swallowed thickly. The plan had formed quite completely in his brain just minutes ago, and of course he couldn't utter a single phrase to the senator or to anyone else. Not even to himself; he dared not to think of it in a coherent manner.

_By the Maker, am I going out of my mind?_

No – despite the ridiculousness of it all, what he had to do felt… right. For himself. For Lena. Perhaps Organa would understand one day, or perhaps not, but such was the will of the Force, and he was a Jedi – yes, he told himself he was a Jedi, even as his heart cried out for her – and his duty was to let his actions flow from the Force… flow without thought.

_Please forgive me, Bail. Not only for leaving you, but for doing what I am about to do soon. For the lies I will tell, and for the deceptions I will play. For this one last betrayal, I am truly sorry._

"I plan to leave in four days," was what Obi-Wan Kenobi said out loud. "Let us at least part on amicable terms."

"Amicable?" For a second Organa appeared ready to explode and topple the desk with his white-knuckled hands. And then he slumped. His head rested limply upon his chest as he heaved a sigh, quietly. "I… I hope for that as well."

Kenobi eased himself out of the chair and walked to the senator. When he placed his hand upon his shoulder, he felt that Organa was trembling slightly underneath the elaborate reams of purple fabric. "Forgive me," he said, "for all I've done to wrong you, just as I've forgiven you. I only ask that you stop the interrogations on Larmé Sarena Narona for the four days I'm here. Keep her in the solitary holding cell. For my sake, Bail. You always told me that I needed to do something for myself, and so I ask for this."

A slow nod of assent. Then, "Obi-Wan… Obi-Wan, I don't think I can ever live down what I did, giving that order. But I saw the chance that the Empire could be crushed _now _and I wanted to seize it, even if it meant defying everything that the Alliance stood for—"

"I know. But have patience. That day will come, whether or not we live to see it."

From the corner of the room came a bizarre, stereophonic lowing sound; Kenobi craned his head to see Chig Nugla attempting to struggle dazedly to his hoofed feet. He couldn't help but grin, tiredly. "Come, Bail, I see that our friend needs assistance. And then a drink at the cantina should be in order, don't you agree?"

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

The next day Kenobi slept, drifting for hours in a warm, healing trance. He had expected nightmares, or at least vividly disjointed visions, but his mind rested dreamlessly, weightlessly, and at times he could almost feel the dry, smooth brush of the desert air sliding over his skin. And when he woke with the red dusk slanting through the wide bay window, it almost seemed as though he had returned to the Jundland Wastes and had left the previous events blissfully behind him forever.

Almost.

He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and gingerly stood on the icy, glossy floor. The coldness seeped into the soles of his bare feet, spreading upwards throughout his nude body, chasing away what wispy, lingering sensations of Tattooine still clung to his thoughts.

Kenobi shivered. Looked down at himself, at the light hairs that were raised on his arms, at the pale indications of blaster shots and lightsaber slashes and lacerations and spewing lava that marred his lean, chiseled torso. So this was how a Jedi marked his years – ever increasing scars upon a crude and earthly body that otherwise would remain perennially in its prime, due to its unending regime of arduous training. A vessel of the Force. A scarred vessel of war.

For some reason the idea amused him bitterly, and he smiled to himself, then shivered again as a breeze gusted in from the half-open window.

He walked to the closet and regarded the clothes within. A few flowing Alderaanian robes of garish colors, a white military-like uniform of some sort, and a heavy brown cloak that passed could pass as Jedi garb. He pulled out the uniform and dressed himself. Below him was an array of footwear ranging from ceremonial slippers to oiled shoes; he buckled on black, knee-high leather boots.

Then he knelt in the closet and pushed aside the remaining shoes until he found in the dusty corner cranny the two shiny, metallic items he had been looking for. He secured the lightsaber onto the concealed belt loops at his trouser waist, and tucked the miniature blaster into his left boot.

He had initially encountered some difficulty acquiring a blaster, but had finally drawn one discreetly from the belt of a young cadet yesterday evening at the cantina. It had been a simple sleight of hand that had left both Bail Organa and the cadet oblivious; nevertheless, the weapon would be reported missing soon – if it hadn't been reported already – and a thorough radar sweep of the compounds would be conducted.

For this reason he had to hurry.

Grimacing, he nestled the blaster more securely along the side of his calf. Like Qui-Gon had said, it was an uncivilized and tasteless weapon that took no training at all to perfect, but Kenobi admitted that it did provide some small advantages over the lightsaber. While the lightsaber could only kill and injure with its highly concentrated blade, the blaster could stun with low-frequency lasers. Could leave no tell-tale Jedi burn.

Kenobi straightened, glanced around him. The breathtaking dusk had faded from the window, abandoning the room in smudgy purple darkness.

He would have preferred to remember his last evening on Alderaan in all its glowing embers, he contemplated as he paused at the doorway. But this would have to do. And somehow he was certain that in the decades to come, should they come, he would gradually forget this moment like a drop of paint dissolving into water. But then again, he supposed he would always remember the _first_ day as intensely as the Tattooinian sunbeams. Emerging from that silver ship, with Lena slumbering contentedly behind him and Bail Organa running joyously to him with both arms outstretched in welcome, Obi-Wan Kenobi had truly believed in that flickering, brief, and beautiful illusion that an era of paradise was about to begin.

But it had only been an illusion, and – like all illusions – it had shattered as swiftly as it had formed.

_Goodbye, Bail, my friend, and don't think of me too unkindly._

Kenobi walked out and shut the door.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

The earsplitting squeal of a blaster shot seared into the stagnant quiet of the holding cell, jolting Larmé Sarena Narona from the cot like a puppet on strings. The blurry remnants of sleep still dragged at vision, but instinct – those years of continuous training at the Academy – pulled her along, made her reach to her hip for the blaster, made her steady her legs in the defensive stance—

Four more shots screeched out and a tiny shower of something painful was raining down on the nape of her neck before she realized where she was; instead of her blaster, her hand grabbed only the rough weave of the prison jumpsuit, and instead of steadying herself, she nearly fell as the chains around her ankles tested their limits.

Lena finished opening her eyes. Focused.

And saw Obi-Wan Kenobi standing before her.

This time she did fall. She tripped nosily backwards over the blasted chain, sat gracelessly down at the edge of the cot.

But this man standing on the other side of the durasteel bars and holding the smoking blaster – not _Obi-Wan Kenobi, _not that ideological Jedi son of a she-bantha that she wanted to positively slaughter with her bare hands each time he rambled on with his conflicted politics or invaded into her dreams and nightmares like some dark, shining knight.

He looked the same as he did on the night he had visited her last. No, she was mistaken; his straw blond hair was neater, his jaw was shaved, and most noticeably, the vicious wound at his temple had healed into a light green discoloration. Only his eyes remained identical, the same endless and clear and peaceful gray-blue that took her breath away to describe…

And why did she care! By the Maker, why did she even notice?

A traitor, that was what he was. Liar. Turncoat. Manipulator. Hypocrite. Bastard.

The invectives stirred restlessly at her tongue in an arsenal of poison that she aimed point-blank at his heart – or what glacial stone block existed in its place – and she prepared to fire.

"Obi-Wan, you – you – look at this mess; I thought you advocated peace."

_Hell._

How she hungered to tear out of the cell and rip him to shreds with her teeth, and all that she had been able to conjure up had been that single, insipid sentence. Surveying the scene about her, she wondered if he had disarmed her mental faculties once more with his Jedi tricks.

Because it was obvious he had used them to bring _this _about. The four night guards that had stood at attention outside the cell were now lying prostrate upon the duracrete hallway floor in a tangle of limbs and tentacles; faint blaster residue smoke still swirled from their bodies.

Another prick of pain jabbed the nape of her neck. She looked up behind her and saw that the security camera on the ceiling was now a sparking, raining mess of spare parts. She turned back to Kenobi. "What's this about?"

"I only stunned the guards – I didn't hurt them. They should come to in an hour. You must leave quickly," he replied, tucking the blaster into his boot and removing a small metal cylinder from his waistband. He flicked a switch, and a long blinding rod of blue light issued forth from one end. It hummed ferociously with a heatless, concentrated energy; he whipped it to the bars and Lena gaped as she watched it slice through the durasteel like a knife cutting through syrup.

A lightsaber, she thought. A weapon of the Jedi. Deadly.

"You're here to kill me."

The blade paused and Kenobi looked up from his task. Was that a smile upon his features or simply a shadow from the flickering light orbs? "I'm not here to kill you."

"They why—"

"You must leave this place tonight, Lena."

"I must—" She stared at him, attempting to divulge his expression as he resumed slicing through the bars with the lightsaber. His face was unreadable, like that of a mysterious painting. Irritation overwhelmed her, and the pressure of anger soon built. Did he feel the absolute dire need to leave her floundering at every given opportunity? Was that the secret weapon of the Jedi – to have the ability to disarm a Stormtrooper from the inside out? "You're lying."

"No." Kenobi deactivated the lightsaber, clipping it back onto his waist. He grabbed two bars and pulled out the smoking door from the frame, then rested it against the wall with a small clatter.

She would have scoffed if she hadn't found the situation so unbelievable it almost seemed like a hallucination. She tested out the dubious words on her tongue. "So you're saying… you're here to rescue me."

He lifted one shoulder in a quick shrug as he stepped into the cell. "I suppose you can put it that way."

"Blast you, Obi-Wan!" Lena's fury exploded in a shower of fireworks, and she bolted from the bed, charging forward until the shackles cut into her wrists and ankles and the pain reverberated to the bone. Kenobi halted precisely in his steps just centimeters away and caught her gaze – she found that she was staring up at those eyes and she couldn't do anything else; those damned shackles made sure that she couldn't even _touch _him…

And if she could, what would she do? Slap him. No – he deserved much more than that for what he had done – he deserved to be ripped apart, to be left for dead. "Your bosom buddy Bail Organa put you up to this, didn't he? What is it now – you drag me away on the pretext of rescuing me, and lead me into an even greater trap? Do you think this is a game, Obi-Wan? Is it _fun_ for you, manipulating me?"

"Lena, I'm _helping_ you from this place because you shouldn't be here." His voice was so soft she could barely hear him. And now an expression she_ did_ recognize settled like a black satin cloud over his features. Profound sadness. For a wavering second he blinked down at the floor, and she could have sworn she saw the briefest glint of something shimmering on his eyelash… "I've… I've permanently severed my ties with Bail Organa," Obi-Wan Kenobi said, "and will not be communicating with him anymore."  
"I know you're lying—"

"You don't mean that, Lena," he replied, simply.

Damn him! She tried to reach out with her arms and shove him – do _anything_ – and only succeeded in making the increasing soreness of the durasteel shackles echo up her forearms. And suddenly her whole body was smothered in a dull, familiar sour ache that made her want to _scream_…

The pain was a lingering side affect from the nerve serum that had been injected into her body two days ago, this much she knew. It was a common artificial stimulant that the Empire itself employed in massive amounts upon its prisoners and it caused minimal physical harm, but – by the Ultimate Maker – it just hurt _so_ much… every nook and cranny of her body, every extremity and every centimeter of skin…

No, she would not show her agony. She would not show this man that she had undergone this ordeal and that it had made her nearly tear out her own limbs and yearn to die in order to escape it; she was a Stormtrooper, and she knew no weakness, and she would not give him the satisfaction of seeing even a speck…

And as quickly as it had come, the pain vanished. Deep within her brainstem, a remnant particle of the nerve serum had detached itself from the spindly fingers of a dendrite cell and had floated harmlessly into the bloodstream.

_Oh, Maker._

Lena realized she had been holding her breath. She let the air out with a hiss. "Obi-Wan, you Jedi bastard, you can't possibly be helping me," she gritted through clenched teeth.

Something that looked like weary amusement crossed his countenance. "Any why not?"

"Because – because…"

Because it was literally _insane_, because he was an insufferable Jedi of the highest rank, and it had only been a handful of days ago that he had personally delivered her into the clawed grasp of this supposedly righteous Alliance. Because he had spouted for hours about the necessity of her telling him the name of the Imperial planet, and because of the trillions of deaths and bloody wars she could prevent if she only martyred herself to the greater good…

And because… he _couldn't_. He just couldn't.

"Because I'm a Stormtrooper," Lena said out loud. "I'm A-186, I'm faceless Imperial _scum_ – your friends, former friends, whatever they may be to you, never fail to remind me of that fact. And in my mind I have information that's more valuable than kessel or spice, so of course what you're doing now is a complete farce. I'll bet that past the hallway there are fifty uniformed men waiting to riddle me with blaster shots."

Kenobi shook his head. "Alderaan has no motive to kill you. As you said, you contain valuable information."

"And I've also said that nothing – _nothing_ – will make me reveal Emperor Palpatine's central planet to any of you. And I've kept my word, so I might as well be dead, Obi-Wan. I've kept my word, even after—" She stopped herself. _He can't know about what happened._

She wasn't quite sure why she hadn't told him already, and it made her angry. _Obi-Wan, they tortured me. _It was a simple proclamation. And perhaps he would flinch after she said it, perhaps his proud shoulders would stoop in guilt. Guilt. Good, he needed guilt, he needed hurt, as strong a dose as he could possibly handle…

No. Lena bit the inside of her mouth in frustration, felt that damned sting of wetness gathering at the bottom rims of her eyes. "I hate you, Obi-Wan," she finished. "If you want to deliver me to the execution squad, just do it now."

He was mute; she saw the gentle rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. A small frown creased the space between his eyebrows as he looked at her, scanning her face as though he were _searching_... And then he said, "If I were to kill you, I would have no need for an execution squad."

"You—"

"A strong enough hit to this nerve would do it," he resumed. He extended a hand. He pressed it gingerly on the hollow between her neck and collarbone, and his fingers were warm and dry and unwavering on her skin… and fiery pain radiated from the spot.

She swallowed – was he really – ? No, it was the old pain from the invisible needle wound that had been delivered by the torture droid, and it still felt so agonizing—

Kenobi dropped his hand and the fire dispersed. "And also this nerve at your solar plexus." He tapped her upper abdomen with the back of his fingers; the lightest of taps through fabric, but an unseen wound there protested as well. He removed his hand, brought it upwards again. "And the deadliest location, here." He touched the back of her neck.

The pain flushed like a volcano into her head and she vaguely knew she was suddenly leaning on his arm, gasping for air, reeling with a jettison of stars.

"I'm so sorry. I didn't know it was still so…"

Did Kenobi say that or was she hearing voices from the traces of nerve serum? His hand was no longer at her neck – thank the Maker, the agony was now gone – and was supporting her shoulder firmly. She realized she had closed her eyes, and she opened them, and saw that he was squinting at her, and his pupils were so dilated that they drowned out his irises and his eyes were almost black…

He knew.

He _knew_. Oh, Maker. He _knew_. And he had been testing her injuries with those gentle touches. He knew everything all along. "Everything is not the way it's supposed to be, Lena," he was saying. "This atrocity never should have happened – it was never the will of the Force. You need to be gone from here—"

"Obi-Wan… _stop it_." She was whispering in little shudders. Didn't care anymore. "_Please._ Stop your lies. Get it over with. Do it."

The lightsaber was in his grip before she could even finish speaking, before she could even react. Then the blue beam flashed before her eyes, so close that it nearly blinded her, and it spun around her in a blur, spun and crackled the air and something rattled and clanked behind her, and abruptly it was gone and the room was dim again.

Was she dead? Was she dying? She broke out in a cold sweat; her knees weakened and she tumbled forward, instinctively throwing her arms about Kenobi, and it was only then that she realized he had used the lightsaber to do nothing more than to sever the four shackles connected to her limbs.

For a moment she could only cling onto him. She felt his steady arms around her waist, and it seemed like that night on Tattooine when she had cozied up to him in order to retrieve the comlink, and yet it also seemed wholly different, the way he was holding her… and she knew that even as the lightsaber had swiped before her face, a hair's width from her throat, she had never believed that he had planned to kill her. Ever.

She took a trembling breath. Detected the light, indescribable, bittersweet scent of his skin, a mixture that reminded her of the desert and of the vastness of space and of grief and old memories…

She straightened. Detached herself from him and caught his gaze. "Obi-Wan, what—"

"Hush." He took her hand tightly in his firm grip. "No more time for words, Lena. We must leave now. Come."

And it fully occurred to Lena then that he was in earnest. _By the Maker, what was he doing! _A barrage of unwanted emotions assaulted her; she held back when he tugged at her to follow him. "Why are you doing this?"

"Does it matter?"

"Yes!" she snapped in reply, and her anger for him returned in full force. Anger that made her want to grab him and shake him and embrace him all at once. "You – you – Obi-Wan, you can't do this! Do you know what will happen if they ever—"

He gave her another tug. "Yes, I know. Come with me."

"Did you hear what I just said to you? You're a Jedi and you can't do this!"

"Why not, Lena?" He stopped in his tracks and his voice suddenly sounded deeper and hoarser, and it sent a shiver spiraling up her spine. "After all, the Rebellion has done what they wanted to you. Tell me – was injecting you with nerve serum within their jurisdiction? I'm a Jedi, Lena, and I act through the will of the Force, not through a government's political agenda."

_Maker…_

"You're talking about revenge," she murmured.

"I'm talking about righting a wrong that never should have been committed!"

"_Their_ wrong, not yours!"

"No, Lena. It is my own. I just… failed to see it before it escalated beyond my control." He shook his head, a little. "It was not right."

She simply stared at him, observing the bleakness in the faint lines at the corners of his eyes. She observed how the edges of his hair had just started to lose their golden wheat color. She noticed the furrow between his brows, and ruminated on how youthful he still seemed despite it all, how defiant. "Jedi," she asked, "are you apologizing to me?"

He briefly frowned in thought. "Well, I suppose… if you'd prefer to consider it in that manner."

She prepared to smirk at him derisively, at the grudging excuse he had given for an apology, but slowly realized that she was smiling. Yes, _smiling_ – smiling faintly and effortlessly, as though she were naively twelve years old once more and he had given her the most precious …

He was still a bastard and a Jedi and a Rebel, and nothing could change it, least of all a simple acknowledgement of the past. Years of experience had taught her that.

She wiped the simpering expression off her face in annoyance and wrenched her hand away from his grasp. "Words are nothing, Obi-Wan. Just air. It changes nothing, do you understand? So stop treating me as a commodity, because as long as I'm alive and capable, I am not yours to drag from here to there. I make my own decisions at all times, Jedi. You've cut my chains and now I'm free to do what _I_ want, not what you decide for me. I – I'm—" She grunted in frustration. "_You_ didn't have to do all of this, you know. I never asked for it, and so now I don't owe you anything. I can stay here and you can't do a thing about it."

He looked at her. He didn't move, just looked at her. And when she thought she could stand the silence for not a second longer, he parted his lips and sighed. "You're right, Lena" he said quietly, then turned on his heels and stepped over the remains of the door and walked down the hallway.

Lena remained motionless for a second, following his departing figure with her gaze. Then she cursed under her breath.

_Damn him. All that he stood for._

She sprinted after him.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

To be continued. Sorry for the late update. I have midterms coming up and it's a pain. Expect more in a month. Thanks for reading and reviewing.


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